


The Second to Last Jedi

by asingerofsongs, MayGlenn



Series: Stars and Skies [24]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahch-To Nuns, Anal Sex, Discussion of Pregnancy, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone should listen to Maz, F/M, Family, Finn's Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Major Character Injury, Multi, Nightmares, One-sided Reylo, Pilots vs Infantry, Politics, Polyamory, Stealing Things We Liked From TLJ And Making Them Better, Stormtrooper Culture, Stormtrooper Rebellion, That's Not How The Force Works, Threesome - F/M/M, Torture, Vaginal Sex, porgs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-04-21 19:45:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 55,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14292084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asingerofsongs/pseuds/asingerofsongs, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn
Summary: Colonel Kix began scheduling transports to go out across the galaxy, and the first few to return reunited several families with their stormtroopers quite happily and without incident. Suralinda Javos had returned to cover the events, and popular opinion continued to be wildly in favor of what the Republic was doing for the ex-stormtroopers.People began, actually, to consider the war already won, which was its own problem. Taxpayers wanted to dump all their money into the SRTF—which no one was complaining about—but got stingy with military spending, leaving the New Republic Navy to find creative—though, now, more legal than they would once have been—solutions to their funding difficulties.“The First Order relies on our complacency,” Poe had told Javos in an interview that barely got them the votes to pass their skeleton budget. “I’m against military spending as much as the next person, but as long as we have half a dozen star destroyers unaccounted for, we have to assume the First Order is still out there, waiting until we disarm to strike again.”“Will we ever get to disarm, then?” Javos had asked him, suddenly the cutting reporter again.“Force, I hope so,” Poe had said.





	1. Chapter 1

Timons was, for once, not hiding behind her workstation as monitors tracked and tallied and displayed the inevitable interferences that affected long-distance, real-time communications. She wasn't watching with a discerning eye for the specific but subtle signals of First Order eavesdropping or interception—actually, Connix was doing that.

The crew currently in the Communications Center was barely a skeleton. In deference to Timons’ anxiety and out of respect for her privacy, Leia had kept only those necessary while she ran the call.

The letter the General had written to Timons’ long-lost relatives had received a reply more quickly than they had expected, though it was shorter than Timons had hoped, and that was making her nervous. Still, her aunt had wanted to meet her, and that was enough. A date for the call was set and now, as Leia gave Connix a nod, somewhere far away on a planet known for very little, a holoscreen beeped. In the Conn, Timons tried to breathe the way Rey had taught her, calmly and evenly.

Finn was there, too, in front of the holoscreen, smiling pleasantly as he waited for Timons’ aunt to connect. After several rings, there was a click and someone spoke. The woman who answered sounded old, but strong, her voice like the General’s. It didn’t immediately spark recognition, as Timons had hoped, but that didn’t mean anything. She didn’t have an eidetic memory when she was a baby. 

Finn’s smile was warm and his demeanor friendly, though he kept things professional as he verified a number of things to make sure she really was Alaani Kearric, the sister of Timons’ deceased mother. 

“Thank you for all that,” Finn finally said. “I do have Timons here—ah, of course, that’s what we call Zimona. She is standing by.” 

“Yes! Yes,” came the voice, almost frantic. “You can hear me okay, right? I keep looking at the little—”

“Ma’am,” Finn said, interrupting gently. Maybe anxiety ran in the family, or the woman was just nervous about the technology. Finn had to keep reminding himself that there were even more remote places than Jakku in this galaxy.  “You’re coming in loud and clear. Here she is.” 

He nodded to Connix, who connected the video feeds—they’d been off until the woman’s identity could be verified, as a matter of security. But now, as Timons stepped forward to take Finn’s place, the holoprojector in front of her flickered to life.

Timons was face to face with a woman who looked remarkably like her, if older, and with darker eyes and hair. “Zi—a-are you—Zimona?”

_ Not in many years _ , she wanted to answer, not since Zimona had died with her parents and left a nameless baby in her place, who would one day get the name ‘Timons’—just a random name, given to her by a random stranger. Instead—

“That's—the name my parents gave me, yes,” she said, though worried that sounded stilted. She peered at the screen, looking at her aunt’s face, and found herself smiling uncertainly. “You're really—I mean, you really are my aunt? I really did find you?” 

“And we found you!” Alaani replied, beginning to sob. “You look so...I never thought we’d see you again, so you look—better than I could have hoped! We never stopped looking for you, it’s just hard out here on the Rim, and no one to help us when your mother’s village just disappeared! Ah, I can’t believe—Nahale won’t believe this, she still doesn’t! She had to work today, or she’d be here! She was the first to hold you, actually, when you were born, and, ah!” 

Timons, too, started crying, happy tears that rolled down her cheeks, and for about thirty seconds neither woman had any luck with speaking. Eventually Timons pulled herself together and wiped her eyes so she could see her aunt’s face.

“I would like to meet her—and you, of course, if you can, and if you want to,” she told her. 

But her aunt’s face fell, and Timons felt her heart sink. Then Finn, anticipating the reason, stepped forward, at a respectful distance, but still in the shot.

“Ma’am, if I may interrupt—the Republic has been quite invested in the reunification project your niece has been running. It would be an honor to host the first family reunited as part of the project, especially since your niece is something of a hero,” he said. “The Republic can also fund transport.”

Timons blushed brightly at the praise but looked over at Finn in quiet, emphatic thanks.

“Oh! We—why we—you could—but it’s such a long way!” 

“We’re not based that far from you currently, ma’am. It’s actually better that we send our own transport for you, as our location is classified.” 

“Well, I—yes, of course, I think we can get the time off—if you’re sure—oh, Nahale will be so happy—and Ziitii! She’ll want to meet you. Oh, Zimon—I mean, Timons. Tell me, are you  _ happy _ ?” 

Timons thought for a moment. “I…am. Or—I’m learning to be, at least. And…and I have friends here, and we look out for each other,” she said, looking over at Connix, who smiled back at her. “I’ll introduce you to them.”

“Good, good. That’s all we can ever hope for,” Alaani said, wiping her eyes. “It’s so good to see you, Timons. I’m so—” she turned to Finn, “Thank you.”

Finn dropped his gaze. “Don’t thank me. We’re trying to reunite all the stormtroopers with their families, and Timons is at the head of the project. She found you herself.”

“Well. Thank you both. I’m so glad to have you back. You look just like my s—your mother,” she said, with tears standing in her eyes. “I’ll have to tell you all about her.” 

Finn nodded. “We’ll contact you about sending a transport.” 

“I’ll come into town every day to check,” she vowed. 

“Oh, that’s not necessary,” Finn added hastily, not wanting to inconvenience the woman, and wondering how there was only one comm tower on her entire planet, it sounded like. “It’ll be at least five days. We’ll say five. I’ll have a message for you in a week.”

When they cut the transmission, Timons burst into tears, turning to bury her face in Finn’s chest and drenching the front of his uniform. He hugged her carefully, unsure what to do with an armful of Timons, and then teased, “If I’d have known it was going to make you cry, I’d have brought Sam along to see you.” 

Timons chuckled softly and dried her eyes, then stepped back from Finn and smiled. 

“Thank you,” she told him. Connix joined them and put a hand on Timons’ shoulder.

“Congratulations!” she chirped when Timons looked over at her, “Let's go beg cake off the cooks so we can celebrate.” 

Finn watched them go, glad that it was Timons, of all the people from the First Order, who'd found her family first. She deserved it more than anyone he could think of, something to add to her collection of good memories to balance out the terrible ones.

Idly, and a little wistfully, he wished they could find something—anything—on his own family, on the mother and father he'd seen in the dream-vision when they'd been staying with Sam in medical. When they had looked before, they had found nothing—no names, no pictures, not even a hint. His name, the name of an infant “Sam,” wasn’t much to go on. Even with Timons’ new database, and all the other information they could scrape together—his DNA, the approximate date of his and his cohorts’ abductions, but not much else—it was a long shot. It appeared no one had ever reported him missing, nor tried to look for him through any other means that could be tracked. So they were still searching, but so far, it didn’t look good. 

Other stormtroopers’ families had been found, of course, the results rolling in steadily shortly after Timons’ own had come back. They were mostly extended family, but in a few cases Timons’ search had found parents. Finn had hoped, naively, that his parents would be among the names found, even though he knew his parents had died in the attack where he'd been taken. That had happened, too, searches returning only deceased relatives. It was sad, of course, but in some ways Finn envied them. At least they knew their family.

They were bound to never find families for some of the ex-stormtroopers, though, and Finn supposed it was as likely to happen to him as to anyone else. And, perhaps because she didn't want to dash his hope, or maybe because she was curious how long a search would run until it stopped itself, Timons hadn't ended his. After all of the other searches that had started around the same time as his had found  _ something _ , his remained running. And he couldn't  _ quite _ stop hoping.

...

Colonel Kix began scheduling transports to go out across the galaxy, and the first few to return reunited several families with their stormtroopers quite happily and without incident. Suralinda Javos had returned to cover the events, and popular opinion continued to be wildly in favor of what the Republic was doing for the ex-stormtroopers.  

People began, actually, to consider the war already won, which was its own problem. Taxpayers wanted to dump all their money into the SRTF—which no one was complaining about—but got stingy with military spending, leaving the New Republic Navy to find creative—though, now, more  _ legal  _ than they would once have been—solutions to their funding difficulties.

“Sorry this one’s taking so long, Time,” Poe said, staring at the sky, side by side with her. “It won’t be a long stop. Just a quick scan around the other moons.” 

“Not a problem, sir. It’s a good plan.” 

“Of course it is: you helped map it out,” Poe grinned. He had things to do, but Finn wasn’t back yet from another round of endless meetings, and he wanted to make sure someone was waiting with the stormtroopers. 

They were referring, of course, to the new way they sent out patrols: the transports full of people had to be escorted by a pair of X-wings each—to keep everyone safe, of course. And if they made one or two strategic stops to scout for First Order activity, it was merely incidental—or looked merely incidental, thanks to Timons’ charting. 

“But you came up with it,” she countered, and Poe only nodded. 

Being an Admiral was a lot less...boring than he thought it would be. Especially now that they were in the public eye (and especially after his little stunt got into a few of the local and intergalactic tabloids, most of them not at all flattering), he had to work as much on making the Republic and Resistance Navies look necessary, and justify their existence when they hadn’t heard much from the First Order. 

_ “The First Order relies on our complacency,” he had told Javos in an interview that barely got them the votes to pass their skeleton budget. “I’m against military spending as much as the next person, but as long as we have half a dozen star destroyers unaccounted for, we have to assume the First Order is still out there, waiting until we disarm to strike again.”  _

_ “Will we ever get to disarm, then?” Javos had asked him, suddenly the cutting reporter again.  _

_ “Force, I hope so,” Poe had said. _

“Here they come,” Poe said, seeing that familiar pinprick on the horizon. “Where’s—ah—” 

Rey jogged up, carrying Sammy in his harness, holding his head to keep him from bouncing too much. She cried, “We wouldn’t miss the big reunion!”

“You’re just here because there’s a big dinner party later,” Poe laughed, jogging her elbow and tickling Sam until he could see his brand new teeth. 

“Tie!” Sam cried, happy to see his favorite ex-stormtrooper (excluding his dad). Hers was also the only name he got mostly right. 

“Hello, Sammy! Look at you, you're growing so fast, yes,” Time replied, giving Sam her hand so he could grab her fingers and wave his hand around while he made happy gurgling noises. “I hear you were holding out on us just to get snuggles, big guy.” 

Rey rolled her eyes good-naturedly.

“He's a crawling machine, now.  _ Great _ at finding trouble, but BB-8 and Crix Madine have been more or less keeping him in line,” she said. She peered at Timons. “Are you nervous?” 

“No time to be nervous, here they come,” Poe said, comming the tower to give them permission to land, and opening a private channel briefly. “Snap, buddy, tell me you found something.” 

“I found that if you ever stick me on patrol with—”

“Ah-ah.” 

“Excuse me, on ‘escort duty’—with the rookie again, I will murder you in your sleep, Poe.” 

Poe laughed. “So Deeks had a blast.”

“Red-nine, coming in hot, sir! Boy was that a  _ trip _ !” 

Poe actually had to cover the comlink, Deeks was so loud, and, frankly, embarrassing. “But did you find anything?” 

“Negative. The only stormtrooper in sight was in the other X-wing,” Snap reported. “But maybe the droids picked up something we can use.” 

“Okay, guys, hit the freshers. Thanks for doing this run for me, I’ll buy you a drink.” 

“A  _ real— _ ”

“ _ No _ , Deeks,” Poe said, and shut off his comm as the transport landed and opened her doors. There were several stormtroopers waiting nervously for their family and relatives, not just Timons, of course, and Kix was there, too, with his datapad to make sure everyone found who they were looking for as the civilians disembarked.   

Timons and her family, though, didn't need Kix to tell them how to find each other. It took only a moment for Timons to spot her aunts and her baby cousin, and before she could wave, they'd seen her too. Alaani clapped a hand over her mouth when she saw her niece, and Nahale—Timons knew her only from her photo—smiled broadly and scrubbed a sleeve across her face as Timons bounded forward to meet them. 

For many seconds, all they could do was cry and laugh at the same time, confusingly, and hold hands and reassure themselves that the others were real. Timons smiled as she was tucked safely under her aunt’s chin—it felt a little like she imagined it would have felt to be hugged by a parent when you were a small child.

“Oh, little one. You're all grown up!” Nahale stepped back far enough to get a good look at Timons and smiled again. “Look at you, you were so small when—well, when we last saw you.” Timons couldn't help but imagine any child would look especially tiny next to Nahale, who was exactly as tall and solidly built as her picture had made her look. Timons almost bet she could give Chewie a run for his money in an arm-wrestling match...

Rey weathered these reunions with only a little pang of jealousy. Timons’ family was beautiful, her aunt and her aunt's wife and their daughter—it seemed a good thing, to Rey, that what was left of her family were women, since she still had such trouble interacting with most people who presented masculine. 

Once everyone had reunited, Colonel Kix gave a short introduction, since Finn couldn’t be there:

“Gentlebeings, I’m Colonel Kix, Co-Chair of the Stormtrooper Recovery Task Force, with Colonel Finn Dameron, who contacted many of you personally. Please take as much time as you wish to become re-acquainted with your family members. Of course, for security reasons, there may be some questions they cannot answer, and we ask that you respect that. They’ll show you to where you’ll be staying while you visit us. And we have a communal meal scheduled for 1800 local time. Please obey all posted signage and anything an officer tells you, as you’re on an active military base.” 

Poe stood up and smiled. “And I’m Admiral Dameron—but I want you all to call me Poe. If there’s any questions I can answer for you, I’ll be in the common area outside crew quarters later on. And, ah, this is my wife, Rey. She’s a Jedi, so, you know, you can trust her.” 

Some of the poor rural people—Timons’ family among them—took a step back in concern, but Poe held out his hands. “She’s here to answer your questions, too, of course. We hope you’ll spend some time with us. Thank you for coming.” 

They were, most of them, from poor farming planets or rural frontiers—populations whose children being kidnapped would go unnoticed and uninvestigated by the Republic—so most of them had never seen anything as exciting as a military base before. Many of the visitors were older, but some of the only relatives that could be found in a few cases were cousins or siblings. Poe and Rey, staying with Timons and her family, led them to the mess hall where there were snacks—good ones, since the SRTF could spare the expense—really, Poe and Rey were just here for the food if anyone asked—set out. Some of the families peeled off, but Alaani, Nahale, and their daughter stayed. 

“So, this is your...son?” Nahale asked, and talked to the baby she held: “Ziitii, would you like to play with, ah—”

“Sam,” Rey supplied. “Yes, he’s our son.”

“Adopted?” 

“Er, not exactly,” Poe laughed. “When you meet our husband you’ll see the resemblance.” 

This startled the farmer, too, and she wasn’t diplomatic enough not to show it. She turned to Rey. “How many husbands do women take on Core worlds?” 

Rey liked her.

“As many as will have them,” Rey said with a shrug and a wink. “I suppose it’s not  _ common _ .” 

“Anyway, we’re hardly anywhere near the Core,” Poe pointed out. 

“And technically I'm from Jakku. Laws were kind of...flexible,” Rey added.

“I've never heard of that planet, I'm sorry—but I understand,” Alaani said. 

Timons laughed and, when everyone turned to look at her, went briefly still at the attention before she smiled at Rey.

“Finn will be jealous,” she said, “He does really,  _ really  _ hate that planet.” 

Sam was watching Ziitii curiously, and suddenly waved his arms and babbled at her quite happily. Ziitii babbled back at him and reached a hand for his mechno-arm, gripping it gently before letting go.

“We could go sit and let them play, and then I can give you the tour when they get tired and need a nap?” Timons offered as the babies squirmed and tried to reach each other again.

“I happen to know the guy who mopped the mess hall this morning, so I can assure you it's clean enough to let babies play on,” Poe said, an inside joke between Rey and Timons and himself. 

Nahale and Alaani smiled, catching the humor if not the joke, and they went to find an unoccupied place to sit with the babies.

Ziitiii looked a little older than Sam, or bigger, anyway (but most babies his age were bigger than him), when they set them on the floor to play with some of the toys Rey had brought from home. As a rule Sam liked playing with other children, though because of his sweet and gentle nature he often grew overwhelmed by kids who were more rambunctious. However, so far, Ziitii was very sweet. 

“We can watch the kids if you want to show them around, Timons,” Poe said, sliding across the bench until Rey put her arm around him. “We'll be right here.”

Alaani and Nahale glanced at each other and then nodded almost in unison. 

“If you don't mind! She's usually very good,” Nahale said, and then crouched closer to her daughter's level. “Your moms and cousin are going to go walk around the base, so mind Mr. Poe and Ms. Rey, alright?” she asked the little girl. Ziitii answered by trying to hand her a rock, which she took and exclaimed over before offering it back. 

“Thank you both,” Timons told Rey and Poe, and Alaani and Nahale added their own thanks as Timons led them off toward her living quarters, telling them her story as they went along. 

She paused for a moment, voice catching in her throat as she talked about the Battle of Dantooine and how many they had lost, and Alaani put a hand on her shoulder. She gave it a gentle, wordless squeeze of support as Nahale drifted close from the other side and rested her hand at the back of Timons’ neck. The unexpected physical contact would usually have startled her, even from one of her friends, but Nahale’s looming presence and Alaani’s steady, reassuring grip instead felt—safe. Secure. Timons let herself absorb that feeling, thankful for her eidetic memory because now she'd never forget it, and then she continued. 

Her aunts listened, encouraging her with an occasional smile or question, and Time warmed quickly to her job as to guide. She watched their faces, learning their expressions and body language—once a habit born of self-preservation, turned now to a new and far more pleasant purpose.

“What can we say?” Alaani ventured, when all was done and they sat in Timons' small bunk with her. “We're just simple farmers. All this is—so big. So much bigger than if…”

She trailed off, and Nahale took her hand as though to strengthen her—or maybe to be strengthened.

“What we mean is, we're so proud of you, and we know your mother and father would be proud of you, too,” Nahale finished, when Alaani couldn't. 

Timons tried to blink back tears, but let them fall in a rush of laughter. She knelt in front of them and wrapped her arms around their waists, relishing in this new embrace called family. 

“Tell me about them?” she asked, and hung on their every word. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains smut!

Dinner was lively that night, with the visiting families arriving as reason enough for the SRTF to provide an especially delicious meal. The cooks pulled out all the stops, and they appeared to have recruited locals for the evening to help. There was Yavinese food, spicy and delicious, as well as a more delicious version of their usual Resistance fare. Kix was a good event organizer, it turned out.

Finn met up with Rey and Poe after Timons and her aunts had returned for Ziitii and left again. He looked around for them at dinner, though, and eventually saw the little family enter the crowded dining room. Timons was carrying a laughing Ziitii, her aunts on either side discussing something animatedly. He had never seen Timons so happy or so at ease, looking around the room more as if in curiosity than out of any actual concern that someone in it presented a threat. He smiled at her when she saw him and she even gave him a genuine smile in return.

“There were a few hiccups, like people wondering if the Republic will compensate them for the loss of their children and some who want their kids to come home with them right away and refuse to sign anything. Some really weird questions,” Poe laughed, remembering a young man from some backward planet who thought Sam’s mechno arm was a punishment. It put things in perspective, reminding Poe that Yavin was actually a comparatively cosmopolitan and educated moon. It had its local yocals, but not like some of these people.

Poe did wonder if Timons, with that big brain of hers, would be happy living on the outskirts of civilization. He also worried what would happen if the Republic lost her.

Rey finished her meal and Poe handed Sam off to her so he could eat, though schmoozing with the family (of Lynette, if we wasn't mistaken, one of the more recent stormtroopers) who ended up at a table with them took top priority.

“Where were _you_ all day?” Poe asked Finn, when the family went back up for dessert.

“Meetings—mostly with Leia and Maz. Maz says a few of the stormtroopers we left with her want to join us after all, and we all agreed the First Order has been too quiet. Maz thinks we might be able to do some recon while we're there, try to figure out what they're up to,” Finn answered. He gave Poe a sly look.

“She specifically requested we bring as many of the original _Vapor_ rescuers as possible, instead of a bunch of the new Republic folks. I think she doesn't want to scare them…” he added. Rey, sitting on Poe’s other side, laughed.

“Scare the Republicans, or the ex-stormtroopers?” she joked.

“Ha! Both, maybe…” Finn responded. By and large the Republic troops who'd joined them were very good people. By now, most had taken to the Resistance staff like they belonged there, and they could have accompanied the original _Vapor_ team easily. Others…not so much.

“Anyway, if both of you can be spared…and Sevens, Time if she's willing, and Karé. And Jess and Deeks,” he said. “Oh, and Sammy, because Maz wants to meet him, and it's probably the second safest place in the galaxy, next to here.”

It might be populated by rogues and pirates who might kill each other at the slightest provocation outside Maz’s citadel, but everyone knew better than to start anything at Maz Kanata’s place. Her response to those who did start fights was legendary—even the Hutts didn't dare to get on Maz’s bad side.

In retrospect, the influx of ships Lando had brought after they'd fled to Yavin _may_ have had something to do with getting revenge on the First Order for picking on Maz’s palace.

Rey and Poe were both overjoyed at Finn’s news.

“You mean you have a mission for us?” Rey asked, vibrating with excitement.

Poe's way of expressing his gratitude was to turn bodily in his chair, grab Finn's face with both hands, and kiss him hard and filthy, his tongue suggesting how he was going to thank him later tonight.

A few of the rowdy stormtroopers gave a few whoops when they noticed, and someone wolf-whistled from several tables away—Deeks, sitting with Jess and Connix, who had both pinched him for being ridiculous (though now Connix was laughing, and in the next moment they were kissing).

“Finn, you're a marvel! We really got clearance to get out there again?”

“Yeah, and you should have a copy of the mission report already, or soon,” Finn said, a little dazed, and Poe nearly left in the middle of dinner to check his datapad, but Finn made him sit.

“Buddy, have I mentioned how much I love you, lately?”

“How smart you are,” Rey added.

“How smart you look in your uniform...”

“How smart you look out of your uniform…”

Finn laughed as they came up with increasingly silly compliments and eventually dissolved into giggles as well—to the amusement of Lynette’s family when they returned with dessert. Lynette, too, had rejoined them, with Lottie, whose family had been found, but deceased, and who was deep in conversation with her friend as they arrived and paused a short distance away. Lottie was looking mostly at the floor and had her arms wrapped close around her torso, skittish and unhappy: perhaps because this was not her family, or, more likely, because she worried Lynette would wish to leave with them. But Lynette turned and whispered something to her, hands on her shoulders, and then pulled her into a hug. When they parted, she touched her mother's arm and before very long, Lottie had been welcomed into a group hug with the entire family, and was laughing as they teased Lynette about her ‘very pretty _friend_.’

“Oh, hi, Colonel! They finally let you go?” Lynette asked as they sat, and he laughed.

“I thought he was the one who was in trouble,” Lottie countered, pointing at Poe.

“Look, I've served my term, okay, you can't just keep bringing that up,” Poe laughed, and when Lynette’s family looked curious but too polite to ask, Poe sighed. “It's a long story…”

After this long story and several more they found themselves able to politely say goodnight and head home for the evening. Sam had completely passed out from all the fun, and didn't even wake when Poe changed him and put him to bed. Kes also didn't seem to be awake, which was good, “Because we owe you a _big_ thank you,” Poe said, backing Finn up to the bed and working the buttons of his uniform loose.

Finn bumped the back of his knees against the bed and almost sat down, except then it would be harder to get his pants off. Instead, he clung to Poe, and Rey slid half onto the bed next to him to nuzzle at his neck—right up until she nipped him.

“Rey! Hey!” he squeaked, still grabbing at Poe. He expected that kind of thing from Poe, but not Rey. She rested her chin on his shoulder, her nose practically touching his cheek.

“Just helping,” she told him mischievously.

“Oh right. And there are rainstorms on Jakku,” he joked.

“I didn't say _what_ I was helping with,” Rey purred in his ear.

“Helping get footprints on the bed, Rey, take your shoes off before you do that,” Poe scolded. “And Finn, seriously, we know you like this even more than I do. We’re married, you don’t have to play coy anymore.”

“Now what do you think we should do to thank our handsome husband?” Rey asked Poe.

“Depends how handsome this mission is,” Poe suggested, nudging Finn back until he fell on his ass on the bed, and then Rey and Poe were both on him, kissing him at the same time—Rey upside-down so there was room for both of them.

“I think however we thank him, we take at least twice as long as necessary,” Poe hummed, finishing unbuttoning Finn's shirt and pushing if off his shoulders.

Finn gave Poe an especially heated kiss. When Rey leaned forward to kiss him again, he gave her one, too, and she took advantage of Finn’s bare arms to scratch them—though not so gently as to make him sleepy.

“I like that idea,” Finn hummed. “But how come I'm the only one whose clothes are coming off, hmmm?”

He let his hand wander to Poe’s backside and squeezed.

“Because we're taking our time,” Rey reminded him, running her fingernails up his arms and over his chest and neck to scrape through his hair as she kissed his forehead. Poe unbuttoned Finn's fly and pulled his trousers down smoothly, working his boots off almost reverently when he got to them.

“I can't believe you got us a mission, buddy,” Poe said, resurfacing and covering Finn with his body. “Us! A real mission! Like we’re the strapped-for-cash-and-personnel-Resistance again. What would we do without you?”

“Die of cabin fever most likely,” Rey suggested with a smirk, and Poe leaned up to kiss her briefly.

“Probably,” Poe agreed, kissing down Finn's naked body to close his lips around the head of his cock.

“ _Definitely_ ,” Finn told them, because they all knew it was true. He basked in the warmth that spread all over his body, following the trail of kisses that Poe left. “ _Poe_!” he gasped as Poe took him in his mouth, and Rey laughed and pinned his arms above his head. He went willingly, offering himself for this.

“Look at you, already impatient and we've barely even started!” she told him, and then glanced up at Poe. “Don't let him come yet. I think I want to ride him while you…what? That is how you say that, isn't it?”

“Yeah, I just never thought _you'd—_ ”

“Are you complaining?”

“No, ma'am,” Finn laughed.

“Not at all, Mrs. Dameron,” Poe echoed, closing his fingers around the base of Finn's cock in case he tried to go off early.

Rey went back to kissing Finn before either of them could say something else stupid. She was supposed to be fertile now, after all.

“And don’t you come yet, either,” she told Poe after a minute. “In fact—”

“I think I have the idea,” Poe said, catching on to her thoughts, either in the Force or just _instinctively_ , and lifting his head so he could speak. “I know how I can take care of both of you. So just relax.”

Finn raised his head and looked between the two of them, trying his very best to read Poe’s mind and failing. He did, however, give Rey a long, thoughtful look—as long and thoughtful as he could manage, anyway, when Poe had his hand on his cock and Rey was—

“You're sure?” he asked her earnestly, because he had thought she had A Plan for getting pregnant and this was not part of The Plan and on the rare occasions Rey _did_ have actual plans, she was generally very adamant about sticking to them.

“I don’t want to wait,” she said firmly. “And I _do_ like sex more than I like being stuck with needles.”

Poe laughed, beginning to slick his fingers and stretch Finn with his fingers. “Well, if _that_ isn’t high praise.”

Rey rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean.”

“I do. And I still don’t think this is going to _work_ , but—”

“Poe Dameron, what have we told you about thinking,” Rey and Finn said together, and giggled. It was Poe’s turn to roll his eyes, and sucked so suddenly on Finn’s cock that Finn actually cried out, his orgasm stopped only by Poe’s wicked fingers.

“All right, he’s almost ready for you,” Poe said, working him open with three fingers now. “You want us to warm you up, Rey?”

Finn’s fingers were caressing her thighs, waiting for permission.

“Mmm, yes _please_ ,” Rey purred, and Finn actually laughed.

“You're so polite,” he told her, leaning up to beg a kiss from her. She humored him and pressed him back to the bed with her own heated, possessive kiss.

“You say that like I never am,” Rey huffed. “Maybe we'll just make you watch, see how insane we can drive you.”

This earned her an ineffective glare.

“Can’t threaten him with something he wants,” Poe suggested, propping Finn’s hips up with pillows and slicking himself up, and wearing a condom for cleanliness, since he was going to be fucking both his spouses tonight. Work, work, work.

“Though we are supposed to be _thanking_ him,” Poe reminded.

“Right,” Rey agreed.

Poe, with his eyes on Rey, fastened the cock ring on himself snugly, though with a hiss. She licked her lips, and he said, “Can’t be going off early, right?”

“ _Right_ ,” Rey groaned, kissing him once before throwing one leg over Finn’s hips, and leaning down to kiss him as she slid down his aching cock.

Anything Finn might have been thinking of contributing to the conversation went clear out of his mind as Rey settled herself comfortably on him, her kisses interrupted by a soft moan when he shifted and she clenched around him.

“ _Kriff_ —Rey,” he practically whimpered, and she kissed him quiet again, this time shifting her hips very deliberately to draw a stuttering gasp from him. He grasped a little desperately at the sheets as she pulled away just far enough to look down at him and smile.

“You’re really trying so hard to be good for us, aren't you, love?” she asked. He nodded, then found his words.

“You're not m-making it—easy,” he managed.

“And _you're_ trying to be good for us,” Poe told Rey, marveling at how attentive and selfish she could be at once, and Poe lifted her shirt off over her head and kissed a mark on her shoulder. “We know you have no ulterior motives, of course.”

Rey huffed and turned to give Poe a playful grin, even as she ground her hips down on Finn, making him cry out again. “He's not going to last much longer, you know.”

“No, I don't expect he will. He usually does, but I think you’re special,” Poe said, kissing the back of Rey's neck as he slid in behind her. He leaned her forward and worked himself into Finn, pushing slowly but firmly into him until everything was tight around his cock and he found he could barely breathe.

“Oh, kriff, you two,” he hissed, burying his face in Rey's hair. He reached around her to get his fingers on her clit. “Finn, how you doing, buddy?”

But Finn was basically beyond words, his world having narrowed to _Rey-Poe-me-us_ and _her-me-him_ and _Kriff_ he loved them more than anything in the world and they were so good to him and—

“Good—so good, you're so— _kriff,”_ he gasped, eventually, because that much he could at least manage, if only barely. His hips hitched up and he whimpered, closing his eyes. He stopped grasping at the sheets and instead reached for one of Rey’s hands and one of Poe’s.

“Oh Finn, you're just too _sweet_ ,” Rey told him, and she leaned forward to kiss him. “When you're ready, love,” she told him, and then turned partially toward Poe. “Go ahead, my love, make him come,” she told him.

Poe changed the angle, working his hips up into Finn, and massaged Rey until she was moving too, and in the flurry of sensations he heard Finn grunt and felt his hips snap up into Rey. He held onto his own orgasm, holding his breath as he tried to come down from feeling both of them go off like that. “That's it, my loves.”

Poe's fingers brought Rey to completion on the edge of Finn's, and the flood of warmth and wet inside her was oddly satisfying. Before anyone could recover, she was off Finn's cock and grinding back against Poe.

“Oh, whoa, hang on,” Poe laughed, hands going to her waist. “Let me just—”

He rolled the condom off as he pulled out and tossed it toward the trash. “Hang on, sweetheart. You're in a reverse cowgirl kind of mood, huh?”

Rey laughed, in the way that all women put up with their husbands’ cheesy jokes laugh. “I'm in a get-me-pregnant kind of mood. You up for that?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Poe chuckled. “I'm definitely up. For that.”

Rey found _that_ joke funny, at least.

Finn panted softly, finding himself very bereft of Rey on him or Poe in him, though not of either of them near him. When his vision cleared, he had only to lift his head to see Rey riding Poe, now. He could feel that she was over-sensitive, almost painfully so, and he scrambled up to stroke her hair back from her face and scatter soft, lazy kisses across her cheeks and mouth and down her neck and chest. At the same time, he ran his hands up and down the backs of Poe’s thighs, watching for knots, any pressure points he could use to make sure Poe, when he came, was just as far gone as Finn had been.

“Oh, Finn, shit. Rey,” Poe groaned, his hands on her hips as they moved together. He was close, he was _already there_ except for the cock ring he was still wearing, but Finn was threatening to bring him off in spite of it.

And he found one, exploring gently down to where Poe’s thighs met his ass. He paused, thumb brushing circles over the pressure point, and looked at Rey as she slid on and almost off of Poe, her rhythm stuttering slightly whenever Poe rolled his hips to meet her. Finn almost didn't recognize the hungry, almost desperate need he saw there, except it was the same look she'd given them the night of their wedding, when what she'd wanted was to finally claim to what was officially, irrevocably hers—and to finally _be_ claimed, equally officially and irrevocably.

It took his breath away.

“Please—let me help,” he said, breathless with the _feeling_ , both physically and emotionally, that swirled under all of this.

“Yeah, yeah, you—” Poe said, and Rey’s gasp hitched up, telling Poe to bring his hands forward, sliding between her folds and circling over that button that would send her over the edge.

Rey slung one arm around Finn and reached back to dig her nails into Poe’s hip, tugging Finn into a kiss while she kept Poe close. She hummed, when they broke for air, “You always do, Finn. Kiss me.”

She relaxed between them, all of them up on their knees, with Poe inside Rey and Rey and Finn pressed together, kissing wetly. There was a river between her legs, and part of her wanted to be doing this upside-down, because the seed spilling down her thighs worried her, or would, if Finn and Poe would stop kissing her.

Finn, of course, had no intention of not kissing Rey, any more than he had any intention of not touching Poe. Instead, he pressed forward against Rey, skin to skin, the sounds she made muffled by his mouth on hers. She rolled her hips up, just far enough that Finn could reach around and slip the clasp on the cock ring, and then she slid back down and Finn jammed his thumb into Poe’s leg where he knew it would hurt—because it would hurt and Poe would love it.

“Ah, shit, shit, Finn! Rey!” Poe grunted, hips snapping forward as he came, seeing sparks of pain, and he buried his face in Rey's shoulder and moaned her name as he emptied himself into her. He worked his fingers over Rey's clit, with his left hand that couldn't get tired, and soon her own hips stuttered and she cried Finn’s and Poe's names into Finn's mouth.

“Force, I love you. I love you,” Poe whispered, kissing her shoulders and leaning over her to kiss Finn's cheek, his hands going around both of them. Then he laughed. “I like trying for babies. We should do this all the time.”

“I'm only fertile a few days out of each month,” Rey said. “So don't get used to it.”

“There goes the romance,” Finn said.

They slid to one side, still stuck together with Rey in the middle, and lay sideways across the bed.

“I'm not sure I could do this more than three days a month anyway,” Poe chuckled.

Finn snuggled up to Rey, still very happily tangled up, arms and legs, with both her and Poe. He reached across Rey to scratch gently at Poe’s ribs and buried his face against Rey’s collarbone. “I think you’re just trying to be humble.”

Poe had _actually_ been fishing for someone to correct him and praise his stamina, but like good spouses they hadn’t taken the bait.

“I mean, you’re basically a cyborg, so you _should_ be good to go all the time,” Finn reminded Poe, knocking his knuckles with a dull clang into where Poe’s hip jutted out. He liked this lithe, muscled Poe in peak physical condition almost as much as he loved the version before Dantooine, who had gotten a little lazy and soft around the middle. Poe caught him staring, and winked.

“Ever the optimist, Finn,” Rey said, and her voice was amused, almost teasing. “You really are _far_ too sweet.”

Finn beamed.

“And you, Poe Dameron,” she added, scrunching down just enough to tuck herself under his chin, her back pressed against his front. “You're so _good._ You're both so good. I love you.”

“I love you more,” Poe told her, kissing her hair and hooking his mechno arm around the small of Finn’s back. “Anybody cold? I suppose we have a few good years before Sam tries sneaking into our bed in the middle of the night and discovering us _in flagrante_ —”

“Okay, there went the mood, you killed it,” Rey giggled, sitting up and wriggling free from between them. “How did we even get like this? Come on, under the blankets now!”

With a minimum of scrambling, they managed to resettle themselves under the covers in much the same arrangement as they'd been on top of them. This time, though, Rey poked Finn in the ribs until he scrunched up so she could cuddle up under both his _and_ Poe’s chins, and the look he gave Poe over Rey's hair was as hopelessly besotted as the one Poe was giving him.

“ _Now_ who's being too sweet?” Finn asked in amusement, but the only answer he received from Rey was a little wriggle as she settled and a contented sigh. He kissed her hair and scratched Poe’s back, drowsy now that they'd all calmed down.

“Thank you for trying with me,” Rey hummed. “I’m just...really looking forward to meeting our children.”

Now Poe sat up, and cupped her chin so he could look at her.

“ _Sweetheart_ ,” he said, “they’ll arrive when they’re ready. You’ve seen them. They’re gonna be here. Even _I_ think we can just—trust the Force on this one.”

 _They will_ , Rey wanted to say, _But I can't promise I will._

Instead, she managed a laugh, if slightly hollow, and snuggled very close to Finn and Poe, as if they could stop the future coming, or else change it.

“All the same…” she said, “I just want to make sure it's paying attention. You know, keep it on its toes.” Her laugh was more genuine this time. “ _Someone_ has to, after all.”

“Of course—and who better than a hotheaded young Jedi, right, love?” Finn asked.

“Right,” Poe said. “And her hot-headed pilot husband and her even-keel Resistance Colonel husband.”

Rey squirmed between them until she was comfortable, giggling. “What’s even-keel about breaking First Order conditioning and escaping with a crazy hot-headed pilot? _None_ of us are even-keel, Poe.”

Poe chuckled. “No, I guess you’re right. Maybe we want to wait until Sammy gets a little older before we try for more, then. We don’t need any more hot-heads in this family.”

He closed his eyes and snuggled closer, taking two deep breaths before sitting up in a minor panic.

“What time do we need to be up for our mission?!”

Finn laughed and reached up to pull Poe back down to the bed.

“Relax, we don't have to be ready until mid-morning. Sevens has training with new recruits and some moron scheduled Deeks on some pilot training, so we can't go until they're done. It's not _that_ urgent of a mission that we have to leave first thing in the morning. I'll comm Maz when we leave so she knows when to expect us,” he said, and then he yawned enormously.

“Oh. Okay, great,” Poe said, voice muffled from where Finn had squished him into the pillow. “Sleep well, buddy. Love you, Rey.”

“Love you, too,” Rey murmured, already on her way to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as ever for your patience, friends! We should be back up to regular posting schedule since Tuesday is Mae's Big Exam. So, either way...


	3. Chapter 3

They arrived on Takodana with ten stormtroopers in all: Poe to talk to local pilots about First Order movement, Finn to see about recruitment, and Rey to see Maz. All of them were there to see the stormtroopers they had left behind with Maz Kanata months ago. 

They brought Chewie with them, and Sam was in the backpack strapped to Poe’s chest. These were peace offerings to the Pirate Queen, amusements so she might decide she wanted to go out of her way to help them, though she didn't often go out of her way for anyone. 

Rey was the only one who wasn’t a little scared of her—or wouldn't admit it. 

“You know the stories are bad when we hear about them in the Order,” Lynette told Deeks in a hissing whisper. “I mean,  _ the  _ Pirate Queen!” 

“She’s only bad when you’re a stormtrooper,” Deeks assured her. “Probably.” 

Finn, walking by the two younger ex-stormtroopers, paused. “Her hearing is phenomenal, and her vision is even better,” he warned them, and then added with a grin, “And don't stare. At anything.”

The two gave him similarly horrified looks as he’d once given Han in response to the same warning. Finn sent a silent thought into the Force for Han. 

Maz was, to all appearances, overjoyed to see them—though Sam and Chewie were her clear favorites. Contrary to the feelings of most of the adults, Sam seemed equally excited to see Maz, or else he was just really excited about her glasses.

“So you finally brought my favorite Wookiee! And my favorite baby. Chewbacca! When are you going to bring  _ your _ lovely wife and offspring to visit, hm?” she asked as they clambered down the ramp. The ex-stormtroopers, even those who had met Maz before and knew her to be a generally good sort unless you annoyed her, were huddled somewhat, as if there was protection to be found in numbers and a united front.

“Ah, and what have we here?” Maz asked, and there was something amusing about the way the group leaned surreptitiously away as she stomped up to them and peered into their faces. “I recognize some of you—you especially, there, the one in the back trying to decide if I'm a threat worth dealing with. I assure you there are greater threats here than an old Pirate Queen. If I want to harm you, I guarantee you won't see it coming, anyway, so you might as well relax before you strain something…” 

This was delivered to Sevens, who gave her an uncertain look.

“Maz,” Rey said lightly, smiling, and Maz turned to her.

“And of course our reluctant Jedi and her husbands,” Maz said to her as Rey offered the respectful bow due an elder Force user—the implication was clear. Maz only laughed and took her hand to pat it. “Not so reluctant though, these days. Just a bit...unconventional.”

“That's what Obi-Wan keeps saying!” Rey laughed.

“Obi-Wan?  _ Kenobi _ ?” Maz said, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “Well, he's one to talk…” 

Poe laughed nervously, still half-convinced a blue Force ghost was going to somehow come and cut his dick off in the middle of the night (though that would honestly probably make him  _ more  _ attractive to Rey, so, joke’s on him). “Anyway, Maz, we heard you had some good news to help us out.” 

“Several pieces, actually,” she said, beckoning him down to her level. 

But when Poe crouched down, she merely unsnapped Sam from his harness and lifted the baby out, helping him to stand on wobbly legs. “Come now, young man, let’s go inside. I have a private lounge reserved.” 

And, holding Maz’s hands (looking almost giant by comparison, coming up to her chest, as she led him towards her palace), their son took his first shaky steps. 

Poe blinked. “H-hey! He hasn’t done that before, has he?” 

“Sam, look at you, buddy! First crawling, now steps!” Finn said, the grin in his voice quite clear.

“I've certainly never seen him do that,” Rey added, also grinning at their son—though she sobered somewhat.  _ Enjoy it while you can _ , a nasty voice (and was it hers or Snoke’s, now?) whispered to her. 

Maz’s glance snapped over to her, like she heard it, too, and for a moment she was sure Maz could see in her eyes that something was wrong.

But then Sam wobbled and sat abruptly, making a surprised squeaking sound.

“That wasn't bad for a start, little one!” Maz told him, pulling him back to his feet, where he stood wobbling uncertainly.

“Don't worry, it only seems impossible. You'll get it,” she told him, because he had a look of utter concentration on his face. “Now then—how about I talk with your parents, and we find you something entertaining to do?” 

Then she looked up at Finn, Rey, and Poe. 

“Well? Keep up,” she said, picking Sam up and leading the way.

Halfway to the palace, Maz handed Sam back to Finn, and led the way around the back to an adjoining building, probably where they had stayed the last time they were here, if Poe remembered correctly. He kept an eye out for anything suspicious, even if Maz was a friend, while Finn moved to the back with the stormtroopers to remind them to stop walking in such neat lines. 

“It looks too stormtroopery,” he told them. “We’re trying to  _ blend _ .” 

Someone was already in the lounge when they got there, and Poe wondered why Maz would get them a private bartender when he recognized the face. 

“Klif!” he blurted out before he even recognized that he remembered the name, and put his arm out to stand protectively in front of the group. This was the stormtrooper who had only pretended to support the Resistance, who might have done untold damage—maybe given away the Resistance’s position to the First Order—if Maz hadn’t seen through his deception and kept him here. 

“Commander Dameron! Major Finn!” Klif replied, standing up, and, when he saw the kind of welcome he had received, he held up his hands. “I—I mean you no harm, sirs. Not anymore.”

“You can trust him,” Maz said, giving Klif a measuring look as if she might catch him out. His desire to join the Resistance was genuine, now—she was confident of it, or she wouldn't have agreed to let him join their meeting.

“Klif?” Sevens asked curiously, remembering him from when they'd left him behind, all of them a strange mix of scared, confused, and angry. She remembered knowing him on the  _ Vapor _ , if only barely, in the way stormtroopers hardly ever knew each other. 

“Punch?” he asked.

“It's Sevens now,” they answered after an uncomfortable pause, “It’s alright—you didn't know, right?” 

Klif smiled, and looked at the rest of the group. 

“Wait. I know some of you!” he said in surprised delight, “Why'd you  _ all _ come? Did Maz send for you?” 

Poe was still wary, because he hadn't been able to tell  _ before _ that Klif was trouble, but if he trusted Maz on that before, he could trust her now. So he moved forward to shake Klif’s hand. “Good to see you again, Klif. We, ah, we're here for a few things. Apparently you, is that right?”

Klif stood straighter. “Yes, sir. I'm ready to join the Resistance. Maz helped me straighten some things out in my head.”

Rey looked around, expecting to see another face. “How about…?”

“Sarala?” said a voice from the door, and the other stormtrooper from the Vapor that they’d left here entered, carrying a tray with drinks and cups. “I'm here. Here to stay. Maz gave me a job.”

“I put some of the others to work, too, those who wanted it. A very few of them traded work for transportation as far from the Republic, Resistance, or First Order as they could get.”

She winked at Finn at that.

“The rest are like Klif,” Sarala said. “I think they're crazy, but they'll be in good company.”

Lynette gave Sarala a nervous smile as the other woman handed her a cup. All of the newer stormtroopers had gravitated toward Sevens, who stood in the middle of their cluster looking only slightly less intimidated by everything here than they did.

Klif turned to Finn. “They'll be glad to see all of you when we finish here. We want to fight the First Order. And soldiering is all we have ever known, so doing anything else is…”

“For some of us,” Sarala suggested.

“—hard.”

“Hey, it's alright, I know the feeling,” Poe said encouragingly. Then he turned to Maz. “Can we meet them now? No need to stand on ceremony.”

Klif looked a little surprised, but he nodded. “Yeah, of course... They're planning on meeting us here later, but...” 

Both men turned to Maz and she smiled, making a shooing motion at all of them.

“Go, meet your new recruits, and we will talk later,” she told them. “Sarala can introduce you to the ones who have decided to stay here, as well.” 

As they began to file out, Maz took Rey's hand. “Except you, Rey. You stay and chat with me.”

That settled it. 

With Sam back in his carrier with Poe, they trooped after Sarala and Klif, who seemed to spend most of the time engaged in good-natured bickering.

Finn and Poe looked at each other with raised eyebrows and half-smiles, but were soon distracted by a group of stormtroopers they found in a friendly match of boloball. 

“Hey, the pilots are winning!” Sarala laughed, waving at the group to get their attention.

“The pilots are winning?!” Poe exclaimed, and added instantly, “You’re all hired.” 

Finn laughed when they all turned to look at the newly arrived spectators. 

“ _ We  _ won yesterday,” one of the youngsters muttered rebelliously, throwing their opponent a grouchy look.

“Oh, well in that case,” Finn said with a shrug, “I guess we should hire all of you.”

“You're with the Resistance?” one asked.

“The Republic, now, officially,” Poe answered, though he didn't look very official holding a baby and dressed mostly like a civilian. 

Still, it got a few whispers, and Klif eventually explained, like he was dealing with dim-witted children, “That's  _ Eight-Seven _ .”

“Colonel Dameron now,” Finn corrected. “And my husband, Admiral Dameron—”

“You survived?!” one of them yelped. Yep, these were definitely kids from the  _ Helldiver _ .

Poe chuckled to himself. “I got lucky. But, please, don't let us interrupt. We want to see you guys play.”

“Seriously?” another asked.

Finn held his hand up, tipping it side to side in a “sort of” gesture. “Well, boloball is great for strategy and teamwork, which you'll need, if you're going to join the Resistance—I mean, the Republic.”

They gave him an odd look, as if they collectively were trying to decide if he was really telling them to play boloball for training purposes. Or maybe they simply wondered why he was stating the obvious.

“Please do finish, we don't want to stop you in the middle of a game,” Finn told them, and after a brief pause, they did so.

Most of them were younger than Klif, closer to Deeks’ age, which was unfortunate, since the Republic had strict rules about that even if the Resistance didn't. Of course, these poor kids probably didn't have  _ birth  _ records, either…

Sam liked watching the game, screeching animatedly any time anyone else made a noise. Poe took this opportunity, while Finn mostly focused on getting a read on these people, to teach his son to repeat words, like “goal!” and “ball" and “kick" and also “you mother _ fucker _ she was clearly out of bounds!”

Poe maybe could get a little too into boloball.

“If you teach our kid curse words, you owe me twice the amount in the swear jar every time he says them,” Finn said mildly.

“Aw, ref, bad kriffing call!” Deeks shouted, completely without thinking, and then flinched as not one, but several people whirled around and shouted his name in dismay.

“Sorry,  _ sorry!  _ I didn't  _ mean _ to, it just came out!” he yelped, while Lynette, Sevens, Lottie, and the others laughed. 

Finn stared at him a little longer, until Poe exclaimed, “Oh, come  _ on _ , he’s not even our kid!” 

“Right, thanks, Admiral, just rub it in that I don’t have a family,” Deeks said, sounding way too smug to actually be hurt by this. 

Poe sighed. “Fine. I’m starting a tab. Just put my credit stick in the swear jar.” 

They watched until the game ended, and the pilots did indeed win, and then Klif made introductions:

“So, ah, we’re all that’s left. The ones that wanted out, left. The ones that wanted to stay are staying. And, ah, we’re not sure what Ms. Kanata did with the bad ones.” 

The stormtroopers actually chuckled amongst themselves at this: but where Poe had seen Finn and Sevens and others speak of being reconditioned or spaced in the First Order, it had always been with fear—here, they seemed to trust Maz so implicitly that if she got rid of someone, they had it coming. 

Poe still wasn’t sure how he felt about the  _ ethics  _ of that, but it was a step in the right direction for these poor kids.

Once the game was over, Finn made his own round of introductions, and once everyone was comfortably acquainted, he looked back to Klif.

“The Republic will be glad to have you, of course,” he told them, though they would definitely have to talk about how to handle the obvious youth of this group—some of them were heartbreakingly young, and had it not been for their upbringing, Finn would have told them to go finish growing up before they ran off to fight a war.

“Sir, can I ask a question?” one of them—Bishop, Finn recalled, one of several who seemed to have taken names based on holochess pieces—asked, and Finn smiled.

“You can even ask two,” he said to them, and they looked over at Deeks briefly before looking back to Finn.

“Is he—are you—” he started with something like awe, switching to speaking to Deeks, “—You’re DK-1313, right? You told us Finn was real. Back when we attacked their base, you were in the ground.” 

Deeks, amusingly, seemed torn between pride and embarrassment.

“ _ You _ were there too? Where?” he asked.

“TIEs, right above you,” he answered. “We were ordered to fire on your AT-AA.

Deeks added worriedly, “I know. I almost got Finn killed…”

“You also let them know I wasn't propaganda invented by the Resistance,” Finn said when Deeks trailed off.

“Admiral Dameron helped,” Deeks said.

Poe raised his hands. “Leave me out of this, I'm just the pilot.”

Bishop was smiling.

“Anyway, yeah, that's me! He threw me out of my AT-AA, you should have seen it! He was like… He came out of nowhere!” he said, happy to launch into the story, which he always seemed to love telling, and which grew a little more dramatic each time. 

Finn smiled at Poe as everyone, regardless of whether they'd heard the story before, inched a little closer to listen, their eyes never leaving Deeks. Even Sam was mesmerized. 

…

“Well, my dear, I haven't been able to speak with you since the wedding,” Maz began, pouring her a small mug of tea. “How are you?”

The question seemed far more than casual, as she adjusted her glasses.

Rey felt like she was being tested—if she could convince Maz there was nothing wrong, she could convince  _ anyone _ .

“I'm—as good as you'd expect. Worried the First Order is planning something, worried about Luke, worried about Finn and Poe and everyone else.” She made a dismissive  _ same as always _ gesture with the hand that wasn't holding the cup of tea. “I don't think there's a single person who isn't worried. But being worried makes you harder to catch out, so maybe that's the trade-off.” 

Rey did her best to project exactly what she should be feeling, worry for her family and friends and even herself, but no more than Maz would expect, no looming panic that time insisted on marching forward no matter how she hoped it might stop or slow down and give her  _ more time _ .

Maz stared at her, adjusting her glasses some more. “Uh-huh. And where’s Luke?” 

“He went to the Temple to find out how to stop Snoke. Without me,” Rey answered, trying not to feel guilty for not going with him. She wasn’t sorry she had stayed behind, and he hadn’t held it against her—but Maz was just looking at her mildly, and Rey wasn’t sure if the Pirate Queen was judging her or not.

Maz suddenly glanced down at Rey’s belly. “You’re trying for children?” 

Before Rey could answer (or think to get offended), Maz tipped her goggles up onto her head and smiled sadly. “I don’t think it happened this time, my dear.” 

Rey huffed softly in frustration. She hadn’t run a test yet, but... “How do you know?” 

“What, you don't believe a wise old woman?” Maz asked. She patted Rey’s hand, and said, both kindly and with a firm insistence, “But there’s no need to rush.”

“Everyone keeps  _ saying _ that. But they can't know that, they can't see the future or guarantee that I have time. We're going to have to face  _ Snoke _ , Maz. How can you or anyone guarantee me I'll live through that to build a family with my husbands?” she demanded, voice strained, her question coming out in an urgent rush.

“Do you think building a family with your husbands counts if you’re not there to help them?” Maz asked, frowning deeply and leaning on the table. “Having the children is not as important as staying alive. I didn’t think I’d need to tell a scavenger with a good head on her shoulders  _ that  _ one.” 

“But we  _ want  _ children, Maz, I want them to have that much, if—” But even if she'd said it to herself a hundred times, she couldn't make herself finish.  _ If I can't be there _ . 

“Did you know Poe's mother?” she asked, instead, thinking back to why Shara Bey had wanted a son, to the story Kes had told at dinner after the wedding.

Maz, looking and sounding as though she were humoring Rey, nodded. “I met her once or twice.” 

“She wanted to have Poe when she knew she still had time to actually know him, even if the worst happened. It didn't—she had longer than the war, but…I know how she felt. I want the chance to make memories with them, even if it's not very long. I want them to have holos when they're older, if I'm not there for them. I want Poe and Finn to have that much, at least,” Rey tried to explain. “They’re going to be born and grow up on Yavin, I know they will. The Force  _ told _ me they will. I want them to know I loved them whether I'm there or not.”

“And what makes you think you won't be, hm?” Maz demanded, putting her elbow on the table and leaning on her fist. “Tell me about that.”

“There's…a war…is that not reason enough?” Rey asked, but Maz was far too old to fall for something that obvious. She just kept staring.

“The Force doesn't see fit to include  _ me  _ in any of these future visions,” she admitted grudgingly. “It's like watching them from afar, or from the tree. I think I  _ am _ the tree.”

“What if that’s the only way the Force can show you?” Maz tried with a shrug. “That’s  _ it’s  _ point of view.” 

When Rey didn’t have anything to say to that, Maz sat up, and began clearing up dishes, stacking them as though it were an old habit. “I’m not saying that’s the answer, but the more I learn about the Force, child, the less I find I am able to know it. We can only guess its will, or if it even has a Will as we understand such a thing. The last people I knew who tried to divine and influence the will of the Force, like magicians, were the Jedi, and none more so than Anakin Skywalker. And look what happened to  _ him _ .” 

“So I'm only supposed to listen to the Force sometimes?” Rey asked, the question almost rhetorical. She was quiet for a minute as Maz stacked dishes, prevented from helping only because when she tried, Maz batted her hand away. 

“I just want them to be happy. I'd much rather that I be included, but if for some terrible reason I'm not, I want to have given my family everything I could. That's all, really,” she said finally, quietly.

“If you think you can be replaced,” Maz began, coolly, “you’re right.”

Rey did actually blink at that, surprised. 

“We all can. We all  _ are _ . All of us are insignificant in the Force. All of us are made of the same stardust that our ancestors were made of, and that our descendants will be. Of course the Force can replace us.” She stopped stacking dishes, and returned again to take Rey’s hand. “But the Force is an energy field that binds all  _ life  _ together. I know you know that, I know you feel it every day. The  _ Force of others _ , Rey. Not just Finn and Poe, but young Sam as well. Luke and Leia, and Chewbacca. They cannot replace you, not if you gave them a hundred children, or a thousand clones. If the Force is telling you are going to die in this fight, your concern should be less about getting pregnant and far more about  _ not dying _ .” 

But Maz coughed, and shrugged. “Not that the Jedi are supposed to be ‘concerned’ about anything, but I think that’s more in the PR than the practice,” she added with a wry grin.

Rey wanted to explain that it  _ wasn't _ that she thought she was replaceable, but that she'd seen how happy her husbands and children were in those visions, and them having that was more important to her than...than anything, really. She needed them to have that, and since she wasn't sure if she was in the visions or not, she could at least pave the way for a future where her family was happy.

But maybe it was ridiculous to believe she could make a vision true, or stop it happening, with her own interference. It would be horrible to know she had cost them all their future by trying to force the future she'd seen in a vision. And Maz was right, that trying to divine the path of the Force hadn't ended well for others.

Maybe part of growing in the Force was learning when to let it be.

Rey gave Maz a small smile. “Obi-wan says I'm ‘unconventional’ anyway. I'm  _ sure _ Jedi are  _ not _ supposed to be concerned about having children in the first place,” she laughed. 

“Pay no attention to that, children are a delight. Someday, when and if you do get pregnant, we'll talk about techniques to give birth in the Force, to make it a little easier. You come here, and we'll train. Until then! I have said all I have to teach you!” Maz laughed, and Rey leaned in for a hug. 

“Thanks, Maz.”

“You're welcome, my dear.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry we're late again but May was traveling last weekend.

After dinner—cantina food, so Poe and Rey were thrilled—Finn, Poe, and Timons met with Maz alone in her own rooms, down in her vaults, while Rey put Sam to bed in a guest room a few doors down. 

Maz had spread a number of sheets of flimsi across the table, and Timons was leafing through them with determined focus. Finn had wondered what she was doing, at first, but then realized she was simply committing them to memory.

“This is all the intelligence I have for you, for now. There have been rumors of raids out toward the Rim, but none of the rumors include exact locations. The shipments, though—mostly weapons, but also some supplies,” Maz told them, indicating the papers on the table.

“How did you get manifests…?” Finn asked her curiously. On flimsi, no less. There had to be at least fifteen…

“Trade secret. The First Order is certainly up to something, though. We all knew they'd been too quiet—I fear they've merely been regrouping,” she said.

Poe nodded, already thinking about how to spread his squadrons to cover these areas. At least now with the Republic back on board, there was no shortage of personnel or ships. 

“There is one more thing,” Maz said, looking between the men nervously. “They are targeting children again.” 

Poe stood up, incensed. “Damn it, we’re just starting to get these people reunited with their families—”

“No, Poe. Not like that. I have only heard rumors, actually—if any children have been taken, it’s one at a time,” Maz explained, though the facts posed something of a mystery to her, as well. “I think the First Order, or Snoke, I think, rather, is looking for the child of Rey.” 

Poe and Finn blinked at each other. “Why—”

“Why aren’t you telling Rey this?” Timons demanded, suddenly fierce. 

“I didn’t want this concern to influence her own family planning,” Maz said. 

“Unless they’re looking for Sam,” Poe pointed out, suddenly worried that Rey and Sam were alone (like he could do anything more to protect them than she could). 

“But they don’t even—Maz, how do  _ you  _ even know we’re trying for children? Why would Snoke or the First Order or  _ anyone  _ even be thinking about Rey’s child?” Finn asked, distressed. Timons was now rifling back through the papers as though she could find the answers hidden there somewhere if she just put the sheets in the correct order.

“Since the Force has awakened, those of us attuned to it have gotten the sense that it is...multiplying,” Maz explained. “Rey has always had it, but it’s in you, too, Finn. And...Poe?” 

Poe raised his hands, backing up. “Hey, I just get lucky, so I think the Force  _ likes  _ me, is all.”

“And I haven't really  _ used _ the Force, not intentionally. I accidentally found Rey’s AT-AT that time, but I wasn't exactly  _ looking  _ for it. And the vision we got Sam’s name from was definitely not intentional,” Finn said. It wasn't like he could move things or get people to ignore him, not like Rey could. 

“If you had no Force sensitivity whatsoever, even that much would have been exceedingly unlikely,” Maz responded. 

Finn shrugged, willing to trust Maz on this one.

“But it's never done that before, has it? Why would it be doing it now?” he asked.

“The Force is an ancient power, both the light and dark sides of it,” Maz explained. “Who are we to question how it does things:  _ if  _ it does things.”

She shrugged. “Snoke is powerful in the Force, even if he’s also a bastard. If he’s sending his spies out to look for Rey’s child, then Rey’s child must be vital to the Force.” 

“And...you think Rey’s child could be…?” 

“It could be Sam. It could be a future child,” Maz answered. 

“Great. So that's one more thing we’ll worry about,” Finn sighed—because Rey hadn't already been acting weird enough about them having kids. Not that he felt it was  _ right _ to complain at her increased interest in sex, but...

“Since you're already worrying about Snoke and the First Order fairly extensively, including in their interest in kidnapping children, I fail to see how this should change what you're currently doing,” Maz said, nonplussed by Finn’s response. 

Finn grumbled, but she was right.

“It adds a creepy veneer to the whole thing, is all,” Poe said, making a face. “Why do these people’s plans always hinge on kidnapping children? I mean, yeesh, who even  _ wants  _ to steal babies? Talk about playing a long game…”

“Admiral, this is serious,” Timons reminded him. 

“And I ain’t laughing,” Poe grimaced. “Okay, Time, where we headed next? Where are they gathering?” 

Timons turned a page so she wasn't reading it upside down and then pushed all the papers aside to reach the map underneath. She pointed to a planet well outside the Core.

“NO. We are  _ not _ going back to—”

“Calm down, Colonel, Jakku is just here,” Timons said crisply, pointing to a different planet. “This other one is Jedha. That's an...interesting choice. I didn't know that planet was habitable after what the Empire did to it.”

Poe laughed uproariously, squeezing Finn’s arm in clear affection. “Don’t say the J-word to my husband. It’s triggering for him.” 

Timons rolled her eyes at her superior officer, because he was being superiorly annoying. “That’s not funny, Admiral. If we were in the Conn, I’d have you written up.” 

Poe spluttered in indignation, and then corrected his course, remembering who he was talking to. “Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry, that wasn’t cool.”

But now it was her turn to smile: she wasn’t sure there was anything like the thrill of having something over an officer. “So, Jedha will be worth looking into. There were kyber mines there, long ago, before the Empire, that might be of interest, too.”

“Oh, yeahhh,” Poe said, reaching back into a far memory of a school lesson or something. “Wasn’t there a Jedi Temple there?”

He turned to Maz to confirm. Maybe she had even  _ been  _ there. 

“Jedha was quite the hub of activity, even after the Empire started mining activities there. It became significantly more dangerous then, and yet...” She shrugged one shoulder. “There always were a few good ones, if you knew where to look, or who to listen to—the Guardians of the Whills.”

She smiled at Poe. “I believe your father may have named his horses after two of the best.”

Poe snapped his fingers. “That’s what it was, yeah! But—” he turned back to Timons, “it’s all...the first Death Star half blew it up, right? Is it safe to go there? Is it safe to check out?” 

Timons shrugged. “All the star charts say so. But there could be something we don’t know. Or maybe they just use it as a rendezvous point in space, since no one goes there.” 

“It could be a really  _ tricky  _ mission, worth sending our  _ best  _ pilot on, right?” Poe asked hopefully. 

Timons and Finn just sighed.

“You'll have to take that up with your General,” Maz said, “It's much closer to this planet than to Yavin,” she added, though it wasn't clear if this was encouragement or not.

“We need to let her know about the rest of this anyway,” Finn said as Timons gathered the flimsis together into the order that made the most sense to her. She held them out toward him.

“No, you keep them. You can explain them to the General however makes the most logical sense,” he told her. 

Maz gave her a nondescript wrap made of some kind of animal leather to keep them in. Timons didn’t like touching it, but even she knew not to refuse something Maz Kanata gave her.

“I mean, we could  _ briefly  _ check it out,” Poe pointed out. “We have  _ two  _ of the best pilots in the Republic.” 

Finn nudged him, and he stood to attention. “Thanks for this, Maz. And for—for what you did for those stormtroopers. Can we send  _ all  _ the bad ones to you?” 

He asked this half-jokingly, but Maz shrugged.

“Sure. Though some of them really are rotten, and I’m running out of places to hide the bodies.” 

Poe laughed, but he wasn’t sure she was kidding. On record, he was going to assume she was. 

When they had said goodnight to Timons, Poe stopped Finn outside their door. 

“So what are we gonna tell Rey?” 

Poe winced, tried again. “Let me rephrase that. We are going to tell her, so,  _ how  _ are we gonna tell Rey? She’s already...well, you know. Stressed.” 

Finn scrubbed a hand through his hair and rubbed his face. 

“I don't know. I think maybe...we just tell her? Unless you can think of a  _ pleasant  _ way to tell her Snoke is probably after our children? There's no less-terrifying way of putting that,” he said. 

He sighed deeply and went to the doorway of the room where Rey was humming a soft and utterly tuneless song to Sam, who was apparently already asleep in an old, careworn crib (and Finn wondered where in the world Maz had even found it). She didn't look worried or preoccupied or even thoughtful—she was smiling softly at Sam as she hummed. While Finn was sure she knew he was watching the two of them, she didn't acknowledge him yet, and instead of interrupting the peaceful little scene, Finn reached for Poe to draw him closer.

Poe leaned into Finn, watching their wife and baby interact. She looked so calm and happy—did they really have to tell her all this stuff  _ now _ ? When she looked up, he smiled at her, but she must have caught the edge of something in his face or thought, because she looked a little quizzically at him. 

They each held out a hand for her, and she met them on the bed. 

“So. There’s some good news and bad news,” Poe began quietly.

“Bad news first,” Rey said. They both looked concerned and hesitant, almost scared, and she frowned. 

“What's wrong?” she asked, now somewhat alarmed. It couldn't be anything immediate, not as outwardly calm and un-rushed as Finn and Poe both were, but there was something  _ wrong _ , and she didn't like it.

“Who are you kidding, it's all bad,” Poe said. 

“We'll, knowing where the First Order is rallying is good news,” Finn defends. “Not  _ that _ they are rallying, that's bad.”

Poe held up his hands to forestall Rey interrupting them. “Okay, both bad news. Maz thinks the Order might be hiding on some planet called Jedha. They might be trying to find your child, or digging up kyber cryst—”

“They might be  _ what _ ?!” Rey hissed, eyes flicking to Sam before getting up and stepping back from both of them.

“Rey—please don't—” Finn said, reaching for Rey as she stood up. “They're not going to find him, you know that.  _ No one  _ is going to hurt Sam. We won't let them.” 

He glanced over to the crib where Sam slept, none-the-wiser, his face sweet and peaceful.

“Why didn’t Maz tell me this?” Rey demanded. 

“She—I don’t know, Rey, but we’re telling you now,” Finn said. 

“It may not even be Sam they're looking for. Surely they're talking  _ actually  _ your baby, otherwise the rumors would be about ‘Finn’s clone,’ right?” Poe said. He took Rey's hand, massaging it gently. “Anyway it's just rumors, you know? Who knows what Snoke wants. Last time he built a sun-swallowing weapon, and he thinks clones are a good idea, and amphibious star destroyers. The First Order usually goes bigger than this. I'm sure we don't need to worry about it.”

Rey gave Poe a shaky smile. 

“I don't believe you. And you know I'm going to worry about it.  _ You're _ worried about it,” she observed. But she returned to their arms and pulled them closer with a soft sigh.

“What did Maz say about it?” she asked. 

Finn chuckled softly. 

“...What?” Rey asked again, now smiling softly.

“Well, Maz says she doesn't see how we could worry  _ more  _ about Snoke than we already are. She may have implied if that hasn't affected our...family planning so far, this shouldn't either,” he said, being tactful. Sam was asleep, but who knew what that kid heard when he was sleeping. He kept coming up with new words Finn was certain no one had said around him—or at least, if anyone (Poe) had been using such language around Sam, he or she (Poe) was going to owe the swear jar for the rest of their (Poe’s) natural life…

Anyway, Finn wasn't going to take it for granted that Sam was sleeping.

“Our sex life, you mean?” Poe clarified with a grin, as always impressed by Finn's ability and desire to speak overly-politely. 

“Poe,” Rey sighed, glancing at Sam. 

“Look, he should know his parents love each other, and we're not going to give him the ‘babies are brought by the space storks’ gag when his siblings come along,” Poe defended, pinching Finn's side. He turned back to Rey to squeeze her hand. “ _ Whenever _ that is. No rush.”

“I still want them. Soon. But—” she paused, shrugged one shoulder as if she only half agreed with what she was saying. “But Maz is right. This doesn't need to change anything. The girls are apparently taking their own time, or else the Force is taking its own time.”

At Finn’s surprised look, she gave him a smug smile. “I talked to Maz, too.”

Poe sighed, flopping back on the bed. “At least you listen to  _ someone _ , if not your own husbands, yeesh. No, I'm kidding. Maz is good people. But she can't marriage counsel us all the time.”

Rey chuckled, poking Poe's side. “Okay, I'll relax about it. Guess you two will have to amuse yourselves...”

“Well hey now I didn't mean stop altogether—”

Now Rey laughed, shoving Finn down to the bed next to Poe. “So difficult to please! You men and your complex, mysterious needs!”

Then she kissed them both. “You two and Sam remind me who I need to be right now. And that's all I need to worry about. So, thank you.”

Finn reached up and tucked an errant wisp of hair back behind Rey's ear. Then he dropped his hand to rest over hers and brushed his thumb gently back and forth across the back of her knuckles.

“That was very sweet,” he told her.

“You don't need to sound so shocked!” she replied, grinning.

“I'm not! I didn't mean to!” he spluttered. 

She sat back and considered him, then glanced over next to him at Poe—who laughed at them both—at least until Finn finally spluttered himself to silence and sighed dejectedly.

“But it  _ was  _ very sweet and I  _ like  _ reminding you who you need to be because all you need to be is  _ Rey _ ,” Finn mumbled.

“All  _ right _ , you two,” Poe said, getting up to turn off the lights, and he took off his shoes and jacket to dress for bed. Finn and Rey were already shimmying out of their clothes—Finn even was okay with leaving his in a crumpled heap on the edge of the bed. 

“Shove over,” Poe said, taking the edge and spooning behind Rey, who ended up in the middle. “And good night. No more worrying tonight, got that?” 

“Right,” Rey said, with more determination than she strictly felt, but she was going to  _ try _ . “No more worrying.” 


	5. Chapter 5

“We’re _right there_ , loves. Half a parsec away. It’s a criminal waste of fuel to go all the way back to Yavin IV just to turn around and come back,” Poe pointed out, gentling a fussy Sam in his lap. “What’s there to worry about?”

“Nothing, if it’s just a look around,” Rey agreed. “A very quick, stealthy look around.”

“Recon, right.”

“Do you—can you even hear yourselves?” Finn asked, mildly distressed. “This is how _bad things happen_.”

He was, maybe, possibly, a little more than mildly distressed.

“Finn, nothing bad is going to happen. We'll be in and out before anything bad even has a _chance_ to happen,” Rey said, attempting to reassure him. He was not reassured.

“What does the General think of this plan?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. They hadn't sent her a message because such a detour  wasn't going to add time to their trip, and since it was recon, no one wanted to risk a transmission getting intercepted.

Which was why Finn was of the opinion that they should go home _first_ and then come _back._

 _“Maz_ thinks it's a good idea,” Rey muttered.

Finn gave that statement a serious dose of side-eye.

“Maz thinks that the standard union dispute involves guns, grenades, and possibly a couple armies,” he said, nonplussed.

“You want me to call the General?” Poe asked, “Hand over the comlink. It’s...oh-two hundred, local time, on Yavin, but I’m sure she won’t mind.”

“We could be there and back in the time it takes to wait for her to be up,” Rey said, taking Sam from Poe’s lap, as the baby was still fussing. “Sammy, my darling, what is wrong?”

But Sam was unable to articulate the source of his mood, and Rey took him out of the cockpit, shushing and comforting him. “Well, you two decide. Let me know if I need to be on one of the guns.”

Poe and Finn were left staring at each other.

“Even _if_ anything happened, we’ve got a full contingent of the scariest, toughest Resistance troops we could possibly have,” Poe told Finn. “Timons can help us on scanners, see what we can overhear. But if you—you know, if you have a bad feeling, Finn…”

“You mean like a Force bad feeling? No. Just...the usual. A run-of-the-mill bad feeling. Nothing good ever happens when one of you asks what there is to worry about—there are so many things. There's Sammy. And...I know Maz wouldn't send us, with Sam, somewhere dangerous. But—” he shrugged uneasily. “I still worry.”

He looked toward the door, where the sound of Sam still fussing could be heard from further down the hall. Finn heard Timons’ voice, too, as she said something to either Sam or Rey. At least Poe was right about the scariest, toughest Resistance troops—with maybe the exception of Time, who, while certainly as tough as any of the other stormtroopers, was definitely not scary.

He was startled by Poe leaning in to kiss his forehead. “That’s why we’re still alive.”

Finn sighed.

“We should have Time check the communications, just to be safe,” he said. They could plan from there, at least.

“Right,” Poe confirmed. “We’ll just get close enough to listen in. See what we can pick up. If we get caught, they'll relocate again, so I promise I'm gonna do everything in my power to avoid an altercation.”

“If we get caught,” Finn said, “We have bigger problems than that.”

…

They decided to make the trip to Jedha during Takodana-local night so that anyone inclined to get some sleep could do so. Sam was still fussy, no matter who was holding him, and Finn eventually gave up trying to get him to go to sleep in his crib, opting instead to stretch out on the bed with Sam lying on his chest. Rey and Poe took off and got them en route to Jedha while Sam gradually fussed himself to sleep and Finn watched him, blinking sleepily.

He hadn't been intending to nap, but he felt his eyes grow heavy as Sam relaxed into sleep, warm and heavy on his chest.

 _At first, he didn't realize he was dreaming. He thought that he was, obnoxiously, lost somewhere on the_ Vapor _, which really didn't make sense. But there was nothing to indicate that things were out of place in the halls of the First Order ship, except that there appeared to be literally no one else in them._

_Logic dictated, therefore, that this was since kind of joke, and Finn grumbled as he started walking, trying at least to get his bearings. He thought he had familiarized himself with every meter of this ship, but no, apparently that was not the case._

_Except if it was the_ Vapor _, it was awfully long. The halls were long as he walked them, and he still hasn't found the bridge or any indication that he was going the right direction. He was becoming convinced that this was not, in fact, the Vapor at all. But that made even less sense…_

_“Ah, FN-2187. The prodigal soldier returns,” a voice boomed all around him, and Finn froze. “Captain Phasma will certainly be pleased you've returned.”_

_“This is a nightmare, and you're all in my head,” Finn accused._

_Snoke laughed a mean, mirthless laugh._

_Finn did an about-face and very abruptly walked the other direction, back toward where he'd come from. He wasn't indulging his own paranoia like this._

_“Where are you going to run, FN-2187? There's nowhere for you to hide here,” the voice taunted, following him._

_“Somewhere that isn't here, and you won't be stopping me,” Finn replied, an attempt at calmly. He rounded a corner and found himself in a hall that hasn't been there previously. It ended abruptly in a plain, brushed-steel door and Finn frowned at it before walking the other way._

_There was another hall in his way, with another brushed-steel door, and Finn backed away several steps before he even realized what he was doing._

_“That's right, you recognize these halls. They're the same on every ship.”_

_Of course Finn recognized them—these were the reconditioning cells. Every stormtrooper from Phasma on down avoided being anywhere near them. They felt wrong to be near._

_“Welcome back, FN-2187!” Snoke cackled, just as Finn backed into a group of stormtroopers, all armed, one carrying binders that they snapped around his wrists while he was still gaping at them in shock._

_He reacted the way any intelligent person would have, yanking his arms away and reeling backwards with a snarl._

Poe and Rey heard the screech of their son before they knew there was a problem, and they rushed back to their bunk, barrelling past stormtroopers on the crowded ship and slamming open the door to find Finn thrashing about on the bed, and Sam fallen to one side, screaming his head off.

“Finn!” Rey cried, going to Finn to take his hands, while Poe swept Sam up into his arms to shush him and check if he was all right.

Except for being startled and annoyed, and wanting everyone to know, the baby seemed alright, but Poe was worried about Finn.

“Finn, wake up!” Rey said, sliding onto the bed with him. “It’s just a dream, love. Wake up!”

_As much as he'd have liked to say he was more than an even match for binders, once they'd tightened on his wrists there was no getting out of them. He did give it an admirable attempt, though, right up until one of the stormtroopers kicked his feet out from underneath him. With his hands bound, he couldn't catch himself, and he crashed to the floor—_

_“I’m not going back there!”_

“Finn! Come on, you can hear me, wake up!” Rey shouted as Finn, anguish on his still-sleeping face, gave one last desperate wrench to try to pull his hands away from her. For a split second, he was still, but then he started awake, wide-eyed and hyperventilating.

“Look at me, Finn, it's okay. It was a dream, you're safe,” Rey soothed, “Breathe, love.” She let go of his wrists now that he was aware enough not to take a swing at anyone and rested a hand on his chest.

“Rey?” he asked, blinking several times as if to orient himself. Rey smiled at him, though she desperately wanted to fight whatever had made Finn’s voice go so small and scared. Before she could ask what had happened, though, Sam’s wailing registered on Finn's face and he looked over to Poe and their child.

“Oh, Sammy, I'm sorry,” he said, sitting up to reach for them. “I scared you, huh, buddy? I'm sorry. I scared everybody.”

That had been one hell of a nightmare. He scrubbed a hand over his face and Rey wordlessly pulled him closer so she could wrap her arms around his shoulders and hold him until the tension went out of them.

“Finn? Buddy?” Poe asked, and realized he was holding Sam away from him, to shield him from Finn’s thrashing, but now he turned back.

Sam at first sobbed harder, afraid, but he was a smart baby, and soon saw that whatever had been in his daddy before was not there now, and he reached for him. He sobbed, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” and Poe brought him back to the bed so Sam could crawl into Finn’s arms, as though worried he had gone away.

“You okay, Finno?” Poe asked lowly. “Just a nightmare, or…?”

Finn could have cried when Sam reached for him and then clung to his neck like no one was ever going to remove him.

“I don't know. It wasn't—I wasn't FN-2187, again,” he assured Poe as he rubbed Sam’s back and held him close. The baby gave an enormous sigh and closed and opened his flesh hand on a handful of Finn’s shirt.

“But he found me. He found me, and he was going to send me to reconditioning. And I couldn't get away, they grabbed me and put binders on me and—” And then Rey had woken him up. He shuddered, wondering how far the dream would have gone if someone hadn't awakened him.

“He felt like he was actually there, in my head. I could hear him,” he added.

He looked to Rey, as if she might be able to come up with something comforting to say, a reassurance that Snoke couldn't break into Finn’s dreams, that it had all been a nightmare inspired by something he shouldn't have eaten or his anxiety about going near Jedha.

“He? He?” Poe repeated impatiently. “Who?”

Rey turned to him, eyes dark. “Snoke.”

Poe’s mouth opened. “Like, _actually—_?”

Rey and Finn didn’t reply, but their silence said a lot.

“Okay,” Poe said, his take-charge Rear Admiral voice. This sounded suddenly much too big to handle on their own, one ship _with a baby on it_. And Finn's gut was never wrong. “Okay. Finn’s right. I’m sorry we didn’t listen, buddy. We’re turning around.”

Finn was more relieved than he would have liked to admit when Poe went to the cockpit to turn them back toward home. He watched Rey, who appeared to be silently fuming as she stared at nothing. When she realized he was watching her, she snapped herself out of it and offered an apologetic smile.

“I'm sorry,” she told him, and pressed a kiss to his forehead and to the top of Sam’s head.

“It's not your fault, love. Don't apologize just because you think you should be able to stop it,” he said. She grimaced at him, but she didn't say anything to the contrary.

They were distracted from any further discussion by the ship dropping out of hyperspace. Poe's voice came on over the PA. “All hands, change of plans here, we're heading back to—now what the _hell_?”

Rey leapt to her feet as if something had stung her and all the color drained from her face.

“ _Kriff_ ,” she said, with feeling.

“Proximity alert! Battle stations, all hands!” Poe cried, hitting the _Falcon_ ’s sorry excuse for an alarm. “I need Timons and Rey in the cockpit now!”

Finn and Rey looked at each other, each wondering who should take the baby, now screaming his head off again. But by then the guns were manned by Sevens and Klif, and Finn followed to the cockpit.

Their ship took fire, and rocked dangerously.

“We can’t be at Jedha yet, what the hell is—oh, _no_ ,” Finn began, stepping into the cockpit and looking out the canopy. “That’s the _Supremacy_ , Poe, that’s Snoke’s ship.”

It was easy to spot, because nearly the entire view out to space was currently taken up by a truly enormous Star Destroyer—like a Star Destroyer that had _eaten_ all the others. He held Sam tighter as if to shield him even from seeing it. Or from being seen.

Rey jumped into the copilot’s seat with a grim, grey look on her face.

Timons squeezed in behind him, to get on the sensors. The ship rocked, sending Finn against the wall.

“Is he…there?” Finn started to ask.

Rey nodded shortly, though she couldn't have known if he meant Snoke or Ren.

Which probably meant they were _both_ on that ship.

Finn sat abruptly, right on the floor, his stomach turning over at the mere thought that they were _here_ , where they ought not to have been, not right now. The First Order flagship shouldn't have been anywhere near— _wherever_ they had dropped out of hyperspace, not actually close to Jedha, not if they were only using the planet as a marshalling point. That was why Star Destroyers and transports existed…

The _Falcon_ shuddered and there was a cry of surprise and pain from one of the two turrets, and Finn surged back to his feet. He couldn't fly, and the guns were manned, but he could handle injuries. He tucked Sam into his jacket and zipped it up, like he had when he rescued Sam from that First Order cloning facility so long ago. He’d grown a lot since then, and barely fit.

“We've lost the ventral turret,” Lottie informed them over comms, “Someone meet us in the medbay, I need help with Sevens.”

Finn darted forward and gave Rey a quick kiss on the crown of her head, and Poe one as well, before taking their hysterical child and heading to the medbay.  

“They’re activating a tractor beam,” Timons warned. “We need to get out of range now.”

“There go the aft shields,” Rey added as she evaded the spitting shots of TIE fighters, swooping easily away from them only to face a barrage when she tried to roll the Falcon back around toward open space.

“BB-8, tell me you can do something back there!”

“They're driving us,” Rey snarled, then raised her voice to yell up at them through the transparisteel window.

“And there goes half our engine,” Poe spat. “BB-8, we need—”

“Sir, the tractor beam. We need to jump to lightspeed.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, changing his mind. “We need to calculate a jump.”

“I can do it, sir.”

“Start calculating, then. BB-8, we’re jumping to lightspeed! Everyone hang on!”

“I've almost got it—”

“Shit! Shit, shit, shit! No!” Rey shouted as the engines revved to make the jump and then gave an almighty shudder as the tractor beam caught them the instant before the hyperdrive could kick into gear.

“Rey? We good?” Finn asked over the comm.

“No, Finn, stay there. Keep Sam there, and lock the door,” Rey responded.

She heard Finn suck in a breath. Sam was still crying, just audible over the comm, but he no longer sounded hysterical.

“Stay _there_ , Finn, I mean it!” Rey snapped, “Timons, see if you can shake them!”

...

“I’m okay, sir. I can take the kid, if you need to get out there—” Sevens groaned as they moved into a seat, their leg still smoking. “We need to get that cannon back online—”

“It’s fine, Sevens. You’re my priority,” Finn told them firmly as he worked on treating their leg, keeping one ear on his comlink, trying to block out Sam’s screaming. The baby seemed to be able to tell how bad this was.

…

“Oh, no you don’t,” Poe said, in his fighting-words voice. “They think they can get a tractor beam on _us_ . In the _Falcon_. Rey, prime the ion cannons, we'll shake them.”

The big ship probably wasn't expecting them to put up much of a fight, not when they were also surrounded by TIE fighters and being pulled inexorably closer to the belly of the monstrous ship.

But if that was the case, they were also stupid, and they paid for it by losing use of several lower guns as Rey got the cannons primed and fired them all at once, trying to knock out the tractor beam generator. And she did hit at least one, because there was a gratifying crackle of blue ions and they were, for just a split second, free.

There were several more generators to take the place of the lost one, though, and once they'd locked on again the _Falcon_ was well and truly stuck. Rey tried in vain for a long minute to route power and processing around whatever they were doing to her ship, but as long as they were caught in the tractor beam, she could do nothing. She slammed her fists on the panel in front of her, frightening Timons and probably bruising her hands.

“Okay, okay, I'm gonna hail them, buy us some time,” Poe began, and Timons punched it in.

But Rey's world wooshed in close and loud, and she heard someone else in her head, and she was in his as well.

 _“He'll let the others go if you give yourself up,”_ said Kylo Ren’s echoing voice. _“You know Snoke is only interested in you.”_

“Get out of my head,” she hissed, and Poe and Timons both turned to look at her.

“Or...are _we_ being hailed? Sweetheart, are you—”

“He wants me to come onboard. He says he'll let you go.”

“Ha,” Poe said, turning back to the controls. “Well, he's lying. If we could only get a TIE or something to cut through the beam we could jig out of its pull—I can jettison some of our extra parts! Hang on, Lottie, do you copy?”

As he continued shouting orders, Rey continued to stare straight in front of her.

_“Jump into an escape pod.”_

“No, you'll just shoot them down as soon as I leave! Poe, he wants me in an escape pod.”

“Well he's not getting you in an escape pod, how dumb does he think we are?” Poe said firmly. “We've got a few tricks up our sleeves here.”

“Try the engines again, Admiral,” Timons said, having spent the past several seconds rerouting more power to them.

When Poe tried to rev the engines, they roared to life, and Rey turned in her seat and reached to squeeze Time’s shoulder.

“Well done. Now let's work on getting us out of here,” she said before turning back to her controls and trying to rock and steer them loose from the tractor beam.

 _“Won't get away that easily,”_ Ren’s voice said, unwelcome and sneering and she wanted to beat the look on his face out of him even though she couldn't see it. _“Come aboard, and I swear on my honor they will be released unharmed.”_

Rey growled, using the Force to wrench the controls out of Poe's hands and slamming the _Falcon_ into a hard reverse and actually succeeding in gaining some space between the ships.

“Rey!” Poe cried in surprise.

“What. Honor,” she snarled as she swung the ship to either side. The engines started to whine, but still they made backwards progress.

 _“That's enough of that,”_ Ren said, and a little formation of TIEs went screaming past to leave a series of small explosions in their wake.

The ship shuddered to a stall again.

“Systems report significant damage to the engines, it'll take us time to fix before we can make any jumps to lightspeed,” Timons reported. “Also, Colonel Dameron is demanding to know what's happening and why he can't get through to either of you.”

She raised her eyebrows at Rey, who flipped a switch and winced as Finn’s voice broke in mid-tirade.

“Finn! I hear you, I hear you, stop shouting. Everything is under control,” she said, which was a terrible lie, and she knew it.

“Bantha shit it is, tell me what's happening before I have to come up there,” he demanded. Sam could still be heard crying in the background.

_“If you don't care to come of your own volition, I will send my troops to retrieve you. They will be ordered not to harm you, but I cannot promise the same for your crew…”_

Rey looked over at Poe.

“He says if I don't go to them, they'll come over here and get me,” she told him.

Poe laughed, but she was staring at him like she was serious. They had moved further away, but were still caught in the tractor beam.

“If something disrupted the beam, we might shake free.”

“I could time an ion cannon barrage for the same time,” Timons said.

Poe and Rey stared at each other, almost a standoff.

“But sirs, you're not thinking…” she began.

“I have an idea,” Poe said.


	6. Chapter 6

“You're alright here?” Finn asked Sevens as he settled them, with Sam, in one of the bolt holes Han had apparently added to the Falcon during his smuggling days.

“We're alright. Right, little one?” they said, but Sam didn't seem to agree: he was whimpering, though he seemed to have cried himself out somewhat. Sevens set their jaw and gave Finn a steely look. “If we get boarded, I’ll protect him.”

“Sevens, we’re not getting boarded. This is just a...precaution. I'll be back shortly,” Finn told them, and then shut the floor grate. He could hear Rey and Poe talking over the comms, and while he couldn't tell exactly what they were doing, it sounded like a bad idea.

Was it ever a good idea with those two?

“How are you going to break the tractor beam? That seems like it could go really wrong. I'm going to organize the troopers and get someone to fix that jammed gun. Sevens and Sam are safe and hidden, so there's no need to do anything spectacularly ill-advised,” Finn tried.

No response came from his comlink: either it was off, or Poe and Rey were ignoring him. Finn sighed and was about to march up to the cockpit, when Deeks and Lynette came running down the hallway.

“Sir! We can only fire back with the one gun, and—and some of us are getting nervous, sir.”

“Like, _bad_ nervous,” Lynette confided, her voice low. “Gonna do something stupid. Hurt themselves, maybe.”

As though on cue, they heard a voice shouting from the hold, “I’m not going back! I won’t let them take me!”

“Oh, _fantastic_ ,” Finn said, because Deeks looked like he was only barely holding it together, and Lynette was darting anxious looks around at everything. Finn put a hand on each of their shoulders.

“They're not getting you—or me, or anyone. Alright? Stay with me, we're going to fix this,” he said, and then went past them to the hold.

It was Klif who was panicking. All things considered, Finn probably should have expected it—the threat of being captured was enough to reduce the most hardened ex-stormtrooper to a terrified puddle. Klif had a blaster, and Lynette was right—he looked scared and desperate enough to hurt himself or others.

“Klif? Care to tell me why you're waving that around as if no one ever taught you muzzle control?” Finn asked to distract him.

Klif whirled, but he didn't point the blaster anywhere but the ceiling. Finn took this to indicate he didn't really want to use it on himself or anyone else, and skirted a little closer.

“We can't _stop_ them, Colonel. I was stupid to believe we could. But I won't go back—they won't take me to reconditioning! I’d rather—”

“Do you think any of the _rest_ of us want to be reconditioned either?” Finn asked, and Klif winced. “I have a _son_ and _spouses_. Sevens and Deeks have significant others. Do you think we don't know they'd use us as weapons against them?”

He almost felt guilty for shaming the young man, but now was not the time for a heart-to-heart.

“That's not what I meant,” Klif growled, and Finn raised his eyebrows.

“No? Then you should probably stop threatening to use that thing unless it's on the face of anyone attempting to board this vessel, don't you think?” he asked, and Klif’s somewhat manic intensity faltered for a moment.

“Look, all of you, I know this wasn't what we expected, but we all knew we might find ourselves here, or somewhere like it, someday. We're not going to make this easy on them if they decide to try to come aboard this ship, and we're not going to go quietly anywhere they expect us to go, alright? We're all getting out of this together or not at all, and the more time we have to spend standing here and talking about it, the more likely it'll be the latter.” No time, they already had _no_ time, and now they had even less.

“I want you all armed and prepared to defend this ship. I want soldiers posted at the entrance ramp. You'll want two ranks and every weapon or shield you can find or make—I suggest you start in the kitchen and in medbay. Take all the furniture that can move and build a barricade at the top of the ramp to slow them down and provide cover.” He looked to Deeks—shockingly, the ranking officer here, with Sevens out of commission—until the young man nodded, already looking shell-shocked.

“I'm going to fix the gun,” Finn said, “And Klif, you’re going to go back to your turret. Remember you were all brave enough to leave—you’re certainly brave enough to fire on them to keep them from taking you back.”

…

“If we can control the escape pod just enough to get it through the tractor beam, we can get free,” Poe was saying, jumping into their escape pod to program it. “BB-8, how’s that lightspeed jump coming?”

[Almost got it, Friend-Poe!]

“Timons, can you make the jump for us?” Poe ordered.

“Got it, Admiral!” she shouted down the corridor.

Finn and the stormtroopers sounded busy.

“Why, what are you going to do?” Rey asked.

Poe suddenly had his blaster out, set to stun and holding it loosely in Rey’s direction. “ _I’m_ going to be in the escape pod.”

Rey’s eyes bugged out. “ _You’re_ going to be in—Poe, do you have a plan?”

“Uh, to _not_ let the First Order get a hold of the second to last Jedi? You guys have a much better track record rescuing me,” Poe says, backing into the escape pod, weapon trained on Rey.

“Poe!” Rey cried, absolutely flabbergasted. “But they want _me_. If they don't get me they'll—”

“Hey!” they heard Finn cry out from below them. “Gun’s un-jammed! Deeks, you're up.” There was a scrambling sound, as of someone tripping, and a muffled "I'm fine!" as Deeks bounded down the hall to meet Finn.

Poe lifted his hand to close the door. They both knew that whatever they decided, they had to do it before Finn found them.

“Poe, _don't do this_ ,” Rey said.

Poe stopped moving. “Okay. You're right, that's not fair.”

They stared at each other, a thousand thoughts, aches, _don't do this, I love you, you're more important than me, Finn needs you, no Finn needs_ you.

“Arm wrestle you for it?” Poe winked.

Rey frowned and without warning, flicked her hand in Poe's direction, using the Force to shove him into the bulkhead and knock him out.

“Timons, are you ready to jump to lightspeed?” Rey asked, hauling Poe’s unconscious form out of the escape pod and stepping in herself and shutting the door.

“Yeah I'm ready. Just get us free of this tractor beam and I can jump us out of here,” Timons reported back. Rey took a deep, steadying breath.

“As soon as you can, make the jump. Don't wait for one of us to order you, just do it. Clear?” she asked.

“Crystal—Rey?” she asked as Rey punched the button to launch the pod. There was a change in air pressure and Rey felt her ears pop. “May the Force be with you.”

Before Rey’s comm cut out entirely, she heard a scuffle and a “Timons, why is there—” in Finn’s voice, confused but not yet unduly concerned.

The pod’s guidance system kicked in as soon as she was clear and punted her in between the _Falcon_ and the star destroyer, cutting the tractor beam in half, and from the tiny window Rey watched her ship stretch and shift into nothing.

They made the jump, they were safe, and she let out a small breath as the tractor beam grabbed the pod and towed her in.

They made the jump, and now she was alone.

…

Finn took the ladder from the turret two rungs at a time and met Deeks at the top.

“Lynette is temporarily in command, they're all formed up at the ramp,” he told Finn, and Finn was about to respond when the ship gave the little bump typical of a jump to hyperspace. A slow smile of relief spread across Deeks’ face and Finn clapped him on the shoulder.

“Well done, kid. Go man your gun,” he told him, and Deeks swung down the ladder with a shouted “Still not a kid!” that made Finn chuckle.

“Rey, Poe! What'd you guys do? We're loose, right?” Finn said into his comm, but he got nothing back.

“Rey? Poe? Is this thing on?” he asked the whole channel.

“Colonel, we've got you loud and clear. You should head to the escape pods. I don't know what happened, but they were having a discussion about it,” Timons answered. “I think Rey did something stupid.”

Finn frowned. He went straight toward the escape pods, continuing to try to raise either Poe or Rey as he went and failing to get either of them.

He could feel dread settle into his bones. _What had they done?_


	7. Chapter 7

Poe sat up with a panicked shout. “Rey!”

But it was Finn standing over him. “Finn?”

He looked around him to find the escape pod launched, and his head hurting. He rushed to it and hit the bulkhead with his fist, seeing the blue blur of hyperspace outside.

“No. No, no, no!”

“Poe! Stop, what are you—” Finn started to ask as he reached to grab Poe and pull him over in front of him. “Where's Rey?” he asked instead, doing his best to remain calm, even if he was starting to panic in the back of his mind. Rey wasn't here which meant she had to be  _ there _ , back there where they'd just left what he'd thought was an empty escape pod as the only prize Snoke and Ren were going to get from them.

He caught Poe’s eyes and  _ begged _ with his own gaze for Poe to have a different answer that didn't include Rey having been in the escape pod that they'd just sent to the star destroyer.

“She sacrificed herself so we could get away,” Poe gasped, hitting the bulkhead again. “Damn it!” 

He turned around, shaking with fear and anger. “Is everyone else okay? Are you okay? Where’s Sam?” 

“Sevens is injured, she has Sam and they're hiding, but everyone else is fine. Klif and Deeks are on guns and Timons is still in the cockpit, I think,” Finn responded immediately, more out of reflex than anything else. 

“We have to go back, we have to get her,” he added, already half-turning to head to the cockpit.

“Finn—” Poe grabbed his arm. “We can’t fight a star destroyer in one little ship, even if it is the Millenium Falcon. Much less a star destroyer like that. I’ve never seen—”

“It’s the flagship,” Finn said.

“Right,” Poe said. “Shit.” 

They stared at one another, and then rushed for the cockpit. 

“Admiral! Colonel!” Timons cried, standing up. “What the kriff is going on?” 

“We need to comm the base,” Poe said, flopping into the copilot’s seat, where the comlink was. “We need to get a fleet headed out here to meet us. We’ll get her back, Finn. I promise.” 

“We're going to need a  _ huge  _ fleet, that thing probably has star destroyers aboard that it can scramble,” Finn said. 

He wasn't even sure how you fought something that huge, a literal flying city with the population of a small planet. There were probably civilians aboard, the ones relegated to menial tasks like cooking and cleaning and a million other support duties for a ship so large. There'd be cadets, young troopers no older than Rokko and the kids they'd left on Endor, so they couldn't very well just wipe the whole thing off the cosmic map in an attempt to retrieve Rey. And who knew what kind of intelligence was contained in its many computer systems. 

All they needed to do was get Rey back. Time enough later to worry about what to do with the  _ Supremacy _ .

“We need to comm Luke,” Finn said suddenly to Poe. “He’ll help.” 

He wasn't sure  _ how  _ Luke would help, since he was so far away, but he would. Finn was certain of it, as certain as he was that he was going to be very angry with Rey as soon as they had her back and she was safe and sound and whole.

“Shit,” Poe panted, eyes going distant and panicky, like he was having to call and tell his girl’s dad she wouldn’t be home on time. “Yeah.” 

But Finn  _ also  _ needed to look after Sevens and Sam and the rest of their stormtrooper crew until Poe and Timons could pilot them home for reinforcements.

“I'll be right back,” he told Poe, and gave his shoulder what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze and not a panicked grasp. Then he stopped, because Poe was shaking so badly. “Poe?”

“It’s my fault. I should have—been the one to go, not her,” he admitted.

“What do you mean? You tried to stop her.  _ Didn't you, Poe _ ?” he asked, because Poe didn't look so positive about that answer. “Do you mean to tell me you both had the exact same stupid plan but she was the only one who succeeded in carrying it out?”

He was fairly certain his grip on Poe’s shoulder had become more than a little vicelike.

Poe’s face was pained. “I—no? Finn, I couldn’t let her go, she’s the Jedi, she’s our  _ wife _ . Of  _ course  _ I was going to try to go instead of her.”

“How was this the  _ only _ possible solution you could come up with? Isn't there a way to  _ program _ those things?” Finn asked. He gave Poe a tiny shake and a distressed frown. 

“There isn’t, no, not to break a tractor beam and provide a tempting enough bait to let us get away,” Poe said, setting his jaw firmly. “I was not  _ about  _ to let them get my family. And—I guess, neither was she.” 

“Why are you two like this?” Finn added, but that was rhetorical more than anything. It was because the people he loved the most it if everyone in the whole enormous universe were both completely incurable adrenaline junkies. This was why he loved them, or one of the reasons, and it was probably going to be the death of him. They were going to have to talk about theatric heroism and self-sacrifice...

“Lecture us when we have Rey back,” Poe pleaded. 

Finn gave a long sigh, because of course Poe was right—they didn't have time for this, not when Rey was probably already being held in an enemy cell.

“Okay. Go get on comms, I'll go take care of the others and Sam and Sevens and come join you.”

…

Rey waited in the escape pod as the tractor beam drew her in. She felt Finn and Poe go distant from her, but not detached. She still drew strength from them, knowing she was keeping them safe.  

She hadn't expected a warm welcome, but the number of blasters pointed at her when she sat up carefully would have been laughable if the situation had been any less dangerous.

Kylo Ren stood off to one side, appearing to stare at her (though with his mask on, she couldn't be sure). 

But it was a different man who greeted her once she’d been pulled from the escape pod. She stood and scowled at him as stormtroopers put binders on her wrists and locked them almost uncomfortably tight. Poe and Finn had both pointed him out in photos of First Order personnel, so she recognized his face.

“I'm surprised to see you, Terex,” Rey said, surprising herself by adding, “Alive.”

She  _ had _ thrown an AT-AT at him, last time they met. 

“That's  _ Grand Marshall _ Terex now, my dear,” he said, relieving her of her lightsaber. “Our Supreme Leader saw fit to promote me in light of the recent power vacuum, so I should say I actually owe you a great deal of thanks.”

Kylo Ren was still standing there, just watching them creepily. Almost awkwardly, like he didn’t know what to do when the grown-ups were talking. 

She stared directly at Ren when she reflected, to Terex, “Yeah, I can see why they chose you.”

She turned back to Terex. “Though it still looks like they're scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

“You'd know what that looks like, wouldn't you, scavenger?” Terex snapped, and walked off, nodding at some stormtroopers, who escorted her along behind him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kylo Ren turn and walk away.

“Surely you can do better than  _ that _ ,” Rey quipped, apparently channeling Poe as she was led along through a maze of halls. She wondered if they were taking her to the brig or somewhere else—it might change her escape strategy.

“If you insist,” Terex said. He stopped suddenly in front of a reinforced door that whooshed open to reveal a circular room and more doors, probably cells.

Except they weren't  _ holding _ cells. Rey only narrowly avoided flinching when Terex opened one and gestured stormtroopers to lead her inside.

Not holding cells— _ interrogation _ cells. With those horrible chairs inside. They weren't wasting their time, apparently.

“Take a seat,” Terex said, before two stormtroopers wrestled her into a chair and locked in her arms and legs. “You know, I believe our Supreme Leader is very interested in you, my dear, so you’ll forgive me for not standing on ceremony. I imagine his lap dog is off to tell him who’s come to dinner, so we’ll skip straight to the communication codes you’re using to contact Luke Skywalker.” 

Terex pushed a button, and a metal bar extended around Rey’s throat, like a handcuff around her neck, and constricted.

“You just, ah, raise a finger when you’re ready to talk.”

Rey glared over the metal band, even as she tried (and failed) to get a breath. In an ideal situation, she could hold her breath for maybe a minute before her vision started wavering in and out and she had to breathe. She counted, now, her lungs already burning by the time she reached thirty and the metal bands digging into her wrists and ankles as she fought to get air.

And then she could breathe again, and she was almost angry, thinking that she'd already failed.

“I thought I saw a finger wiggle,” Terex laughed, and then tightened the band again immediately. “Perhaps that was my mistake.”

This time Rey did raise a finger—her middle one—and when Terex loosened the band, she coughed before she ground out, “Okay, okay. It's NTKRF-1NG-LKL-Y,” and gave him the best approximation she could of Poe’s  _ you're an idiot and you don't even know it yet _ grin.

If nothing else, she could work on gasping for air while he worked out what she'd just told him.

“Check that,” Terex said, “N-T-K—” 

To his credit, Terex figured it out on the third letter, and sighed. “All right, that was  _ almost  _ cute. But I'm afraid we don't have time for mistakes like this.”

He pressed the button and tightened the band until Rey’s struggles grew weaker and her noises softer. Every time she reached for the Force, fear slipped it from her grasp. When he released her, she was almost too weak to do anything but cough. 

“Tell me, why are you protecting Skywalker? He’s letting this happen to you. Just like he failed Kylo Ren,” he added gleefully, “if the rumors are true.”

Rey coughed until her throat hurt, gulping air and baring her teeth at Terex.

“They're  _ rumors _ , you  _ idiot _ ,” she snarled, “Luke didn't  _ fail _ .” 

It was a pity this asshole wouldn't come closer. She'd have liked to spit in his eye, but she doubted she could manage anything so defiant when the only thing keeping her upright were the bands around her throat and wrists.

She really didn't want to revisit being choked half to death, though, so possibly it was better for her that he didn't stand any closer. She doubted she could have helped herself.

“Kylo Ren failed Luke. He failed  _ himself _ ,” she said.

“That must be difficult for Skywalker, if everyone fails him.  _ You  _ didn’t go with him into his second exile for some reason we’re still trying to puzzle out, for example. You see, I’m a spy, my dear, and I came up through the ranks not only because I know things, but because I know how they fit together.” Terex leaned his elbow against her chair and rested his head in his hand, like they were having a very pleasant conversation, and he tightened the band around her throat just slightly. “So, tell me all the juicy details about the little row you and dear Master Luke had.” 

“We didn't  _ have  _ a row,” Rey hissed, defensive. Why would she have a row with Luke? Even if she disagreed with his plan to run off to Ahch-to, and he disagreed with her need to stay near her family, he was  _ Luke _ . He meant well, she couldn't possibly yell at him for that.

Terex chuckled lowly, indulgently. “That’s exactly what Kylo Ren says.”

“Ren tried to kill Luke, and he burned his temple down and killed half of his students. He's clearly  _ lying _ . Are you  _ stupid _ ?” she asked, frustrated and angry, and pulled on her restraints. Whatever his answer, she wanted to wipe that expression off his face.

_ “Of course  _ he’s lying. And, I think, so are you, my dear,” Terex said, like he was a little disappointed he had to spell it out for her. “Either Luke fought with you or he fought with his sister...again? Breaking up that Skywalker-Organa team is just asking for trouble, isn’t it? Go on, tell me. What did you do?”

“I didn't do a kriffing thing!” Rey snapped, though the effect was somewhat lost since her voice only squeaked when she tried to raise it. She coughed before continuing. “He didn't fight with Leia  _ or _ me. I didn't  _ want  _ to go to Ahch-To, so he went alone, but we didn't  _ fight _ .” 

“Ah, now that  _ does  _ help!” Terex said, jumping up immediately, and before he said it, Rey almost didn’t know what he meant: “Ahch-To, I haven’t even heard of that one. Still, I’m sure it’s in one of the starcharts we have. Thank you, my dear.” 

Rey felt like she'd just been kicked, and for a split second she thought Terex had tightened the band over her throat again to suffocate her. 

“No!” she screamed, like she could just take the words back, and she strained to free her wrists and ankles. “NO.” 

“Oh, my, is this what a Force-tantrum looks like? Sorry, love, I deal with these three times a day, so I’m afraid you don’t scare me,” Terex said, ignoring her as he programmed information into a datapad held out to him by a uniformed officer. 

“You will  _ not  _ hurt Luke,” she said and lashed out with her rage and fierce protectiveness guiding the Force. 

Terex looked around mildly as all of the stormtroopers in the room collapsed into unconscious heaps. Rey grunted, expecting it to have worked on Terex, too. 

“Well now, that’s a neat trick,” he said with a smile. “It’s very sweet that you think it will work on me. You know, when Captain Phasma first integrated my mind with cybernetic implants, I was furious. Of course I was, she controlled me for a time.”

_ Cybernetics? _

In storytelling mode, Terex continued. “Yes, they shield my mind from the influencing effects of the Force attempted by our Supreme Leader’s puppy, and, so it would seem, you.”

Rey’s eyes narrowed. She knew cybernetics. If she could make stormtroopers sleep (and she hadn't been sure that would work, on this scale, but it  _ had _ ) she could put a cybernetic into sleep mode. Like turning Poe’s mechno-arm off and on. Just, at a distance. With the Force, that felt distant now. 

But with a plan in mind, Rey closed her eyes, and focused, and with something specific to focus on, with something to  _ attack _ , it all seemed so much easier. 

When she opened her eyes again Terex was on the floor. 


	8. Chapter 8

Once Terex was down, Rey sagged against the chair and tried to breathe through her raw, bruised throat.

She had to get out of here, but she was going to have to catch her breath before she tried to break loose from this chair. There was a catch, somewhere, a button, and if she could only locate it and push against it with the Force—

The door wooshed open, and Kylo Ren walked in, alone. He wasn’t wearing his mask,which was something of a shock, as was his confusion as he looked around the room. He stood facing her, feet planted apart, half-threatening, half-awkward. 

“He...wasn’t supposed to hurt you. I came to…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, and Rey looked at him like he had grown a second head. He came to, what,  _ save her _ ? 

“Well what did you  _ think _ he was going to do when he got ahold of me?” she demanded, her voice a low growl. “What is your kriffing malfunction?”

“I—” he began, uncertain.

“If you're here to pick up where he left off, get on with it so I can kick your ass again before I leave.” Maybe she had overreached with that one—she didn't look or sound even remotely threatening. She sounded like she’d been throttled, or else tried to swallow glass, and she could already feel the bruises on her neck to prove it. 

Kylo clipped her lightsaber to his belt and waved his hand to release her from the chair. “You'll come with me, and not do anything foolish.”

“You’re kidding, surely,” Rey scoffed, though she jumped up from the chair and took a wobbly step away from it before he could change his mind. Instead of following, she threw her hand out to call her lightsaber.

It tried to come to her hand, but the she'd forgotten the clip. Instead of flying across the room, her lightsaber clanked uselessly at the end of it, having moved maybe an inch.

She kept her feet planted where they were, though. She wasn't following Kylo Ren anywhere.

He smirked at her—or an approximation of a smirk, like he had seen one done once (actually, for an instant it reminded her of Han Solo, but she  _ ignored that _ . “You're too weak for that, now. I'd save your strength, if I were you.”

Kylo then lifted a pair of binders with the Force and sent them across the room to her. “You'll go willingly, or this will be embarrassing for the both of us. I imagine you'll want your full strength for when you meet the Supreme Leader.”

His tone was oddly flippant, like he was more curious about this meeting than invested. “Put those on.”

Rey looked from the binders to Kylo Ren and thought about being as uncooperative as possible just on principle. Finn would, and Poe certainly would. Unfortunately, he was right—she could waste what remained of her strength fighting with him before she even left this room, or she could save it for when she got to Snoke.

Wordlessly, she snatched the binders from where they hovered in front of her and closed first one side, then the other around her wrists. She bit back a frustrated grunt, and, after pausing for long enough that Ren raised his eyebrows at her and raised a hand as if to force the issue, she followed.

He led her back across the hangar and down endless mazelike corridors in silence. She was still a little surprised he hadn’t tried to kill her on sight, and was curious about this seeming change of heart, or her changing perception of what passed for his heart. Maybe it was to do with their shared visions. Maybe he was growing a conscience—

_ Ha _ .

Whatever it was, it was enough to keep him from simply dragging her along when she wasn't quite fast enough to keep up. He was far from patient, but he did stand and stare mildly at her until she caught up, before continuing at the same pace.

As they drew closer to Snoke and Rey could begin to feel his presence, she began to realize what terrible danger she was in, and how stupid this was of her. 

When they went up a turbolift and he was very suddenly  _ there _ , she froze. This—man?—Kaminoan?— _ sith _ , she decided—had been tormenting her for  _ months, _ but this had still seemed like a great idea an hour ago, facing down a bully rather than running forever and saving her family and friends in the process. She was still reasonably sure it had been their best option in the moment, but she was also about to follow Kylo Ren, who was at least partially insane, into a room alone with Snoke, who wanted to turn her, or else kill her. And while Kylo was acting somewhat strange and cagey, she wasn't stupid. She was confident he would watch Snoke kill her without a thought.

“Well done, my good and faithful apprentice,” Snoke said, his voice booming in the huge throne room. “Truly you are the heir to Lord Vader himself.”

Kylo looked uncomfortable by this praise, though that struck Rey as again more odd than anything.

“Wasn’t Lord Vader the man who killed the Emperor to save Luke Skywalker?” she asked boldly. “I don't understand why either of you think he would have wanted any of this. I think you’ve missed the entire point of Anakin Skywalker.”

This seemed to strike a nerve, and Kylo growled behind her. Rey couldn't tell if it was a hand or the Force that pushed her flat on her face before Snoke’s throne. She grunted as she hit the hard floor, but at least from here she could get a good look at him. Leia would be glad for some reconnaissance. 

Snoke was tall, menacing: a deformed Kaminoan if he had ever really been one. And he only laughed at her: “If Luke Skywalker told you  _ that _ , what did he tell you about Kylo Ren?”

Rey sat up to and started to climb to her feet, but they were knocked out from underneath her and she found herself kneeling, arms pinned down in their binders.

“Something closer to the truth than you’d manage, I expect,” she said, trying to remain calm. She knew Ben Organa-Solo had been Luke’s most promising student, but when he got stronger, he started bullying— _ hurting _ —the other students in the name of something like ‘weeding out the weak.’ 

But Snoke seemed to actually expect an answer from her, so she stopped wrestling with the binders and spat, “He got some of them killed looking for kyber crystals Luke didn’t want them going after. And Luke felt the evil in him, then, when he didn’t even care.” 

She wanted to turn to Ren just to see if this was making any impression on him, but she couldn't turn her head even a little.

“And then he  _ killed the rest of them  _ when he fled. They were  _ children _ , even moreso than him, and he  _ killed them  _ because you told him they were weak and it was what they deserved.”

Snoke gasped, laying slender fingers against his chest in feigned alarm. “Oh? Oh, did I say that? Am I the monster for leading an innocent boy astray?” 

He chuckled now, and used the Force to turn her to face Kylo Ren, still on her knees. “Did Skywalker tell you also how he had a hand in  _ creating  _ Kylo Ren, how he  _ blames  _ himself for sweeping Ben Organa-Solo into my clutches?”

Snoke’s voice was mocking, but Kylo Ren managed to still look embarrassed—or ashamed? She couldn’t get a read on him, as usual. 

“Why don’t you tell her all about the monster you were even before your Master tried to kill you?” Snoke rumbled.

“I already know. And he didn't try to kill you,” Rey interrupted, because apparently she was trying to reason with a crazy person today.  _ What have I gotten myself into? _

A vision in the Force played out between them: a young Ben and a younger Luke. Nothing in it left Rey with any confidence that it was how the event really happened, so she watched it skeptically, watched how Luke was so afraid of the darkness in Ben that he tried to kill him when he was a boy. 

She didn’t want to dignify this with comment, but: “He panicked—his reaction was…it wasn't  _ right _ , but he  _ stopped _ .”

She turned to Ren, doing her best to be earnest, but frustration was making her angry and it was enough almost to make her want to cry. “He wasn't going to kill you. Not then.” 

Kylo Ren didn’t respond. He just stared at her, giving no indication that he heard or understood—or cared. 

She tried to ignore the vision, which now showed Ben’s transformation into Kylo Ren solidifying as he slaughtered his fellow students down to the last one. She saw in that vision her parents fleeing with a young version of herself in tow, and now the vision had a ring of truth to it, and it caught her attention. Her parents looked so kind, and beautiful, and sad. 

And Kylo Ren shot them out of the sky like—like he was possessed. Very briefly, it reminded Rey of Finn, when he woke from those nightmares. That gave her a shock, and she wondered if the two were related. 

No! Finn couldn’t be more different from Kylo Ren. 

“You don’t have to serve Snoke,” she told Ren. It sounded obnoxiously desperate, even to her own ears. “You can choose the Light. Redemption is always possible.” 

Kylo Ren’s face remained impassive, unreadable, steely—or robotic. 

She grunted. “You're being  _ stupid _ !” 

“I’m a monster,” Kylo Ren corrected her. “Just like you said. Skywalker’s students were rivals, just like you. Skywalker was a rival. By the time he drew a lightsaber on me, I already knew I was going to kill him and take his place.” 

Then Kylo Ren activated his lightsaber and slashed it across her face, so hard it knocked her free of Snoke’s hold and sent her sprawling. “That makes me a monster.” 

The pain didn’t even register until several moments after she realized what he had done—given her a scar that matched his. She touched her hand to her face, gaping.

“And  _ that _ ,” he hissed. “Gave me pleasure.” 

“ _ Good _ ,” Snoke hummed. “Good, my apprentice. Use your hate. Just as you will replace Skywalker, the bloodline of Rey the scavenger will replace you in strength. I would hate her, too.”

That damned prophecy again! 

Rey snarled, crouching where she’d landed, and let the rage and frustration, the fear that these two were too strong, and the pain that ran from her cheek to her collarbone, all curl in her chest. Kylo Ren approached her slowly, lightsaber held at the ready as if to strike. This was the man who wanted to kill Luke—her family by choice rather than blood—and the same man who had tried to kill Poe and nearly succeeded and who would kill Finn or turn him into a weapon. He was complicit in the destruction of the entire Hosnian system.

And she was furious and scared, but she was furious and scared because she  _ loved  _ her family and her friends and if anyone wanted to get to them, they were going to go through  _ her. _

She yelled as she surged to her feet and charged straight for Kylo Ren, who was mere feet in front of her and clearly not expecting her to come at him so quickly. She caught him at the waist and they both went down and rolled apart—but Rey had grabbed her lightsaber from him and it blazed to life in her bound hands.

Several of Snoke’s guards charged her, and she yelled again as she met them, throwing one back at Kylo Ren and swinging her lightsaber with very little finesse and quite a lot of enthusiasm.

Snoke laughed, seeming more and more delighted as Rey fought back three guards and Kylo Ren all at once, the Force blazing hot around her. 

Rey could see the Force in lines as gold as her lightsaber, guiding her movements and lending her strength. She felt like she could crush this whole spacecraft if she just reached out and tightened her fist. She could end the First Order right here, take out Snoke and Ren and all of them.

Instead, she crushed a guard’s breastplate around him and threw him into the wall. Her bindings snapped like they were made of paper. Kylo Ren seemed content to let the guards take the brunt of her rage while he picked at her from the edges of the fight at every opportunity. The Force was in him, too, but the white-gold threads were knotted and snarled, so corrupted that she wasn't actually sure they could ever be repaired. The same gold connected her to the guards and even to Snoke. Somewhere far distant, it connected her to Finn and Poe and Sam, and she knew if she looked and listened very carefully, a bright thread of gold would connect her to Luke (and he always shone like a bright sun).

There were limited chances to escape out the door she’d been brought in, but she started drawing the guards closer to it, and Kylo Ren with them. They had to slip up, and when they did, she was going to make a run for it. First, though, she was going to do some damage—it served them right for thinking she was easy prey.

“Good, good,” Snoke said, and Rey hated the way he drew it out. “My apprentice could learn from how you use his rage, child.” 

Rey screamed, and a crack appeared running through the dias on which his throne sat, but Snoke laughed as he stood up and stretched out his hand. She felt the pull of the Force drawing her to him, but she resisted it, gave a mighty push to keep Kylo and the Praetorian guards away from her. 

“ _ Yes _ . Feel that raw, untamed power,” he hummed, closing his fist and stopping all air from getting into her lungs—again, and it sparked a panic in her. “Go on, child. If you don’t like it, you will fight  _ back _ .” 

There was another voice, too, as the world began to darken around the edges.  _ Use the Force, Rey, _ it said, and it sounded like her great-grandfather, who couldn’t help her here, not really, and Snoke began to laugh.

Then a figure appeared in the doorway, hooded and cloaked. 

“Master Luke,” Rey rasped, and the vice around her throat dropped her. She fell to coughing as Luke stepped out of the doorway and pushed back his hood. He paused next to her.

“I sensed you could use some help,” he said mildly.

“Really?” she asked, awed. 

He chuckled.

“Well, yes—but not until  _ after _ your very distraught husbands contacted me.” He looked up at Snoke and Ren, who appeared to be taking a moment to regroup. His gentle expression sobered.

“You cut it a little close, here, getting that angry. I need you to go, now, while I distract them,” he told her, and she struggled to her feet and shut off her lightsaber.

“SKYWALKER!” Ren shouted, having recovered, and he charged across the room at Luke before Rey could do or say anything.

She started backwards into the doorway he'd come through. Luke ducked Ren’s first wild swing while Snoke encouraged his apprentice from his cracked dais and whirled around to see both his ex-apprentice and, behind him across the room, his current one, looking a little terrified. He winked at Rey and whirled his lightsaber in a lazy arc as he stalked toward Ren.

“So, Ben, shall we see what you've learned since Dantooine? Still charging opponents like an enraged wampa, I see. I know I taught you better than _ that, _ ” he taunted.

Ren only screamed, attacking Luke with a speed that surprised everyone for how huge his lightsaber and his whole hulking body were. Even Snoke stood up and outstretched his hand to catch Luke, but it didn’t faze him. 

In fact, Luke only winked at the Supreme Leader, and promptly disappeared. 

_ Run, Rey, run! _ Luke shouted at her, his voice booming in the Force, and the startled rage from Kylo Ren, Snoke, and the remaining guards gave Rey enough of a chance to slip into a ventilation shaft and crawl away.

She paused once she’d put some space between herself and Snoke’s throne room and tried to come up with a plan. The long gash down her cheek and neck and collarbone needed tending, but at least it wasn’t bleeding as heavily as it would have been had the weapon not been a lightsaber. She unwound the already-tattered wrap from her right arm and used it to wrap her raw ankles to take away that distraction, at least. Her other arm wrap she took off and tore to wrap her wrists. She used what was left to clean the blood away from her face. 

At least she wasn’t fighting half-blind now. Had the strike from Ren’s saber been shifted ever so slightly, she would have been missing an eye. 

There were tears running down her face, and she didn’t know if they were from pain, or rage, or fear. She didn’t try to stop them, but she didn’t let herself actually sob. She didn’t have time to be overwhelmed. 

When she had done what she could about her injuries (and there was nothing to be done about the bruises from being repeatedly Force-strangled), she took as deep a breath as she could and reached out to the Force to guide her way. Poe and Finn would be back, with backup, to rescue her, but if they tried to infiltrate this ship they would most certainly be captured. She would meet them when they got here—steal a TIE and go to them, maybe, instead of making them come to her. But they wouldn’t be here for hours, at least, and she still had to get to the hangar and commandeer a TIE without getting caught. 

There had to be somewhere on this monstrosity that she could lay low, and if she could find a hangar on the way and damage some of her would-be pursuers’ ships, so much the better.


	9. Chapter 9

“General, I’m gonna need to borrow the fleet,” Poe said, marching directly into the Conn, with Finn beside him. 

“Someone hold Sam and give me a blaster,” Finn said, passing Sam to a very surprised Connix.

“Colonel! Admiral!” Leia said, in surprise. 

“Where’s Rey?” Connix asked, bouncing Sam in her arms.

“Snoke has her. The First Order ambushed us, but Rey jumped in an escape pod and gave herself up so we could get away,” Finn said. 

The room erupted into worried murmurs. Connix put her hand on Finn’s arm. 

“Which is why I need command of the fleet,” Poe added. He’d come to a stop in front of Leia, and Finn recognized that desperate look. He was going to do something with or without permission. And this time, Finn was fine with that.

But Leia took a deep, steadying breath, and put a hand on Poe’s shoulder.

“Both of you sit, and try to calm down,” she said, looking between Poe and Finn.

“Ah, what? Sorry,  _ no _ , I am not going to calm down,” Poe said. “As an Admiral of the Republic Navy, I am telling you we know exactly where the actual  _ Supremacy  _ is, and as the husband of the last Jedi I am telling you my wife is on that ship. We have scans of their forces, and if we take our entire fleet out, we can end this war  _ now _ .” 

“ _ Rear _ Admiral, isn’t it, Dameron?” a voice said from the other end of the Conn. “The kind of Admiral who needs permission from a higher-ranking admiral to do something as dangerous as take the  _ entire  _ fleet out?”

“Vice Admiral Holdo,” Poe said, turning around. His favorite person. “What is it you need from me before you’ll approve this? Or is it my tone you don’t like this time? Sorry. I forget how to grovel when politicians come in and try to tell me how to do my job!”

Holdo leveled a stare at him, unimpressed by his outburst. “A plan would be nice, Rear Admiral.” 

“We’ve got a plan,” Poe hissed. “Despite what you think of me, the point of this is to  _ keep _ people from getting killed.” 

“And despite what you apparently think of me, I cannot read your mind and divine that you have a plan,” Holdo answered, giving as good as she got. “Would you care to inform those of us who cannot read your mind what you plan on doing with the fleet so that, as you say, we can keep people from getting killed? No one—not you, not me _ — _ takes the fleet out without clearing a plan, most especially if that plan likely entails a confrontation with the First Order’s flying capitol.” 

Poe dipped his head, conceding the point. “We jump back to the  _ Supremacy  _ with—”

“And what if they’ve jumped?” 

“Then we—” Poe faltered, slightly. “Look, our wife’s a Jedi. If they move, we’ll  _ know _ .” 

“We can’t exactly put ‘Force Sense’ on an official report, Admiral,” Holdo said. “Are we just hoping they’ll still be there?”

Leia held up a hand. “Hope is like the sun, Amilyn. If you only believe it when you see it, you’ll never make it through the night.” 

She nodded at Finn and Poe. “These gentlemen can and will find her.” 

“Very well. We jump to the  _ Supremacy _ . What are we going up against?” 

“Four star destroyers were docked, looked like only three of them in commision,” Poe reported, plugging a datastick into the main console to project their enemies’ forces above them. “Two already in orbit around her. The First Order’s leadership is compromised, in transition, likely, and we don’t know what we’re facing, but we need to be quick. If she’s a prisoner and we come to rescue her, they might kill her.” 

“Or they’ll try,” Finn corrected.

“Right,” Poe nodded, sure that they wouldn’t have much success with that. “We launch fighters and bombers to take out cannons so our cruisers can get close enough to launch boarding transports. We have Y-wings and the  _ Falcon  _ firing ion cannons, targeting their generators until their shields are down. Our fleet is a match for theirs in size, now, and our pilots are more than a match for theirs. Once the shields are down, we launch boarding vessels. That’s where Finn comes in.”

Finn stepped forward now, zooming the holoprojection in on one wing of the  _ Supremacy _ and indicating several areas on the layout.

“Our best chance is to board in the cargo bays. They're not especially suited to defending, not like the main hangars, and there's a chance most of the personnel will be concentrated elsewhere to deal with damage or fly fighters. They'll have locked the access doors to the ship, but again, they're not especially heavy duty doors and the security on them should only require minor slicing to get through. The faster the better, though…” Finn said, trailing off, and he looked to Leia.

“Who do we have?” she asked, and he gave her an uncertain look—he was hoping she'd already have an idea.

“What about Tico?” Connix asked.

“We need all our pilots in the air,” Poe countered, but Connix shook her head (Sam, delighted, made a grab at her face).

“Not Paige, sir, her sister. Rose is one of our best mechanics, works with a lot of the electrical and computer systems on the ships. She almost has to be our best bet, unless there's someone I don't know about,” she responded. 

Finn looked at her and mouthed a “Thank you!” as Poe nodded. Leia gave the schematic a long look.

“Alright, I'll defer to your knowledge on this one. Someone inform Tico we'll need her with the boarding party on this one. What then, Colonel?” she said after a moment, and Finn pointed to the prison block in the schematic.

“They're probably holding her in this block, but if not we'll be able to check the others from its station. If she's there, we break her out and head right back to the cargo bay. If she's not there, we'll have to go get her,” he said. He didn't like the uncertainty associated with this part of the plan, but they could only know so much. If they were very lucky, Luke would be able to get in touch and give them more information, perhaps, or help them some other way, but he didn't want to plan on it.

“That sounds like a plan I can approve,” Leia remarked, and Holdo nodded. 

“Where will you be in command, Rear Admiral?” 

“Not in the rear, I can tell you that,” Poe said, getting a few chuckles from the pilots who were there. But he had actually almost forgotten he wouldn’t be in an X-Wing. “I’ll command the  _ Vapor _ , if you have no objections, Vice Admiral. Commanders Wexley and Tallie will be in charge of the squadrons. I’ll take Kun, Testor, and Deeks with me in the  _ Vapor _ .” 

Holdo and Poe locked eyes, until Holdo smiled. “Then may the Force be with us all.” 

The Conn burst to life again to execute the plan. Connix passed Sam off to Poe. 

“Lieutenant,” he said, before she could run away again. “Any chance I could steal you for the  _ Vapor _ crew? I still want to make a bridge officer out of you.” 

Connix looked tempted, but, “They’ll need me on the  _ Raddis _ , sir, coordinating.” 

“Shame. Next time.” 

He and Finn moved out into the corridor, Poe to kiss Sam’s head. “I’ll take him to Jonorai, have her call dad for us.” 

Finn stepped close to Sam and Poe so he could wrap his arms around them both. Sam was starting to look unhappy again, and Finn tickled his arm softly before pressing a kiss to his fuzzy head.

“Daddy no go,” Sam said, stuffing his hand into his mouth to chew on.

“Oh sweetheart, I wish you understood better. We'll be back, Sammy, and we'll bring mom back with us. It'll be okay, buddy, I know it's been a terrible and scary day, but it'll be okay,” he told him softly. At their feet, BB-8 gave a sad little whistle and wobbled gently.

[We will find her, Friend-Small-Sam. You will be safe here] they beeped up at the baby.

Eventually Finn let Poe and Sam go. 

“I’m sorry, buddy. I love you,” he said, and his heart broke a little when Sam’s bottom lip started quivering.

“Bee ‘tay!” Sam insisted, and began to cry. “Daddy ‘tay!” 

“No, son, Daddy and Bee have to go get Mama. Let’s go see Grandpa, okay?” 

“I'll go help with the  _ Vapor _ . See you soon,” Finn said to Poe, and then he, with BB-8 rolling along behind, headed to the ship.

...

It was loud with activity, people coming and going as they checked supplies and systems and started running pre-flight checks. Finn found Timons on the bridge and stopped her for just a moment.

“Did Sevens get to medical alright?” he asked her, and she snorted. Sevens had gone to medical, alright—after Jessika had quietly threatened them.

“Yes, sir, and Dr. Kalonia didn't seem overly concerned that the would be lasting damage. Honestly, I think Sevens was more annoyed that they couldn't come with us than anything. They were talking to Jessika when I left,” she told Finn, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Time cleared her throat to continue. “Some of the ones we brought back from Maz’s requested to help, and have been assigned on the  _ Vapor _ , since they already know her. Even Klif wanted to come.” 

“They're good people—just a little, you know, panicky. They'll be fine if they chose it. Thanks, Time,” he said as he started to leave.

“Of course, sir,” she said, and turned back to her computer checks.

...

“Hey, kiddo,” Poe said, waiting just outside the daycare space until Sam stopped crying. Poe didn’t often have much in the way of patience, but he found himself making an exception for Sam. “It’s okay. Papa and Daddy and Beebee have to go get Mama, okay? You’re a smart boy, you understand that, don’tcha?”

Sam only cried some more. “Why Mama no here?” 

“Well, son.” Poe drew back so he could look Sam in the eye. He was probably old enough to be told about the intergalactic war he had been born into, wasn’t he? “There’s some very bad bullies who are very mean to everyone in the whole galaxy. And your Mama went to stop them. And your Daddy and me and gonna go help her, okay?” 

Sam sniffed. “Beebee?” 

Poe kissed his brow. “BB-8, too. Can you be a big boy for me? Mama and Daddy and me will be home before you know it, okay? Grandpa will pick you up tonight.”

This seemed to calm Sam somewhat, though one final scary question lingered. “Dey  _ here _ ?” 

“ _ No _ , son.” Poe squeezed his son tightly. “No bullies coming here. Promise.” 


	10. Chapter 10

For such a large fleet on a short notice, they got off the ground in a hurry—something the Resistance was really pretty good at. Finn was still worried about the number of ships they had and the size of the  _ Supremacy _ —but they had only to board it and get Rey, not destroy the thing or capture it. They only needed enough of a fleet to cover their escape, and they had that, and then some.

Finn was on guns with Klif, Bishop, and Rook, all formerly of the  _ Vapor _ , so they knew what they were doing. The jump was short, but on the way Finn took Rey’s holopad and tried to contact Luke, with no success.

“Private Channel to Rear Admiral Dameron,” he said, eventually, when he couldn't sit quietly any longer. 

“Private channel, go ahead.” 

“Poe, how long until we're there? I still can't get Luke,”

“That’s probably good news, buddy. Maybe means he’s doing something,” Poe said into his comlink. 

“Poe?” Karé said, looking up when he spoke. “Oh, never mind, you’re—”

“It’s fine, Karé. What’s up?” Poe said, leaving Finn on his comm.

She hesitated only briefly. “Why don’t you want me in an X-Wing?” 

“[Or me?]” C’ai said. 

Poe chuckled. “If I’m going to fly this bird like a starfighter, I’m gonna need some crazy pilots to help me out.”

“Poe!” Finn scolded, through the comm. “Don’t make me come up there!” 

“[Anyway,  _ I’m  _ not a crazy flier]” C’ai defended. 

“You’re still alive, Threnalli. Gotta be a little crazy.” 

“ _ I’m _ crazy, sir!” Deeks piped up, from one of the piloting chairs.

“Not exactly filling your gunners with confidence, if I may speak freely, sir!” Rook called down from the ventral cannon. 

Finn pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to stave off a headache at the pilot version of blowing off steam—which only ever stressed him out.

“As much as I love repairing the damage you people do to your poor starships, I'm not sure you want to put me in the position of having to fix the systems on this pretty lady. The First Order doesn't build their computers the way the Republic does,” Rose said from her engineering station. She was near the engine room studying said computer—or one part of it, anyway—because sitting around and doing nothing didn't agree with her. 

There was a nervous silence following her last statement.

“Oh—not that I can't slice us onto the  _ Supremacy _ ...that’ll be easy,” she said cheerfully, “assuming Colonel Dameron was right about the lower security on the cargo bays.” 

There was another beat of silence.

“I'll...stop talking now,” she chirped.

“You'll do fine, Tico. We're not worried,” Finn said.

“I dunno, Colonel,  _ I _ might be…” Deeks piped up. There was a snort from Rose’s comm.

“ _ Deeks _ ,” several voices said at once.

“Anyway, no one was asking  _ you _ , small fry,” Rose replied dryly, and Deeks spluttered.

“Small fry? I'm taller than you!”

“Behave yourself, or I'll tell Kaydel,” she added, to more indignant spluttering.

“All right, let's cut the chatter,” Finn said, just as Poe said, “We're coming up on the last known location of the  _ Supremacy _ .”

Poe opened a Resistance-wide channel. “All craft, we're about to drop out of lightspeed. Assume all waiting craft to be armed and dangerous. We gotta move quickly, so transports and bombers launch and follow me. Fighters, cover us.”

“Copy that,  _ Rear  _ Admiral,” Tallie said. She seemed to enjoy calling him Rear Admiral more than most people. 

“It's hardly correct protocol to land our best warship with two high-ranking officers on an enemy vessel, Rear Admiral,” Holdo cut in, without bothering to switch to a private channel.

“Well if this goes badly, you won't have to deal with me ignoring protocol in the future, Vice Admiral,” Poe said. “May the Force be with us.”

“Ugh, Poe,” Karé groaned, when the channel was off. 

“ _ What _ ?”

“It's fine,  _ I _ don't care if you kill your career making an enemy out of her.”

“Great, neither do I,” Poe said. “I want shields up the second we drop out in three, two—”

“Kriffing hell—” Finn spat as they were met almost immediately by a small horde of TIEs that seemed to have just been  _ waiting _ for them. All four turrets and the fore cannons started spitting blaster fire back, and Finn heard whoops and yelling as the starfighters joined them and started firing.

“Calm down, Finnegan, you'd think you had no  _ faith _ ,” Jess said over his comlink, and he shook his head as her X-Wing swooped past his gun, hot on the tail of a TIE. Before the  _ Vapor _ came around to start approaching to the  _ Supremacy _ , Finn saw the TIE explode and heard Jess give a soft, celebratory cheer.

“See? Worried over nothing,” she said: “Now go find your wife.”

The  _ Vapor  _ was approaching the  _ Supremacy  _ from the ventral side—furthest from the cargo bays, but that didn’t bother Poe. In fact, he has an idea: “All right, team, look alive. Pilots, I want a nice portside slip from this baby. We’re gonna strafe the bridge. Fore, port and starboard gunners, look alive. Finn, you need any help covering our collective ass?” 

“Cutting forward engines now, boss,” Karé said, “Deeks, give me a hard turn.”

“Angle those shields forward, C’ai,” Poe instructed.

All the pilots sounded eerily calm as the ship began to creak, audible even over the sounds of guns. 

“No, your squadron appears to have it all under control,” Finn said as he shot along an intersecting path with a marauding trio of TIEs. 

“Heads up, they brought out the spec forces TIEs,” he added as as red-streaked TIE interceptor caught his attention. It tore after a lone X-Wing, and before Finn could even distract it, the X-Wing had taken a hit and disintegrated as he watched. Finn wondered grimly which pilot they’d just lost and shook his head sadly. 

“Please be careful out there,” he added uselessly.

“Might want to think about hurrying things up,  _ Vapor _ . We can’t hold them forever,” Jess said, sounding tense. “Son of a—I’m hit, guys, I’ve gotta—”

“Get back to the  _ Raddus _ , Testor, I’m not going to tell Sevens that you went down in a blaze of glory,” Snap broke in dryly, and there was a huff of laughter over the comms that didn’t make Finn feel much better.

“Alright—I'm out. Give 'em hell for me,” Jess said. “Rose, don’t kill me for this one.” 

“As long as you weren't being reckless. I’ll interrogate your astromech,” Rose responded. “Are we there yet?”

“We’re taking heavy losses!” Bastian said, in command of the A-wings over by the cruisers. 

“Gunners, keep an eye on that fighter; pilots, look sharp, we are taking her in for a slide now,” Poe rattled off, all his orders rolling together seamlessly. “All squadrons, protect your transports. Blue wing, tighten up, you’re spread a bit thin, watch out for each other. Karé, drop our nose down, and we’re gonna cut our engines—”

“Admiral Dameron, what the hell are you doing?!” Holdo cried across the comms. 

But everything had gone still as they cut the engines, sliding above the bridge of the Supremacy, almost close enough to see the officers on deck. 

“Gunners, fire!”

“—If you’re going to be  _ showboating  _ instead of directing your squadrons—” Holdo cried over the sound of blasters tearing up the bridge. 

“Squadron Commander Wexley, you got this?” Poe said over her, annoyed.

“Yeah, boss.” 

“Captain Lintra? How are my bombers?” 

“Uh, we’re doing okay, sir. Some losses, but we’re okay.” 

“Finn, take that shot,” Poe said.

Finn was already set up for the shot, and he took a deep breath, centered himself, and took it. 

“Direct hit to the shield generators, Admiral,” Timons reported. “Nice shooting, Colonel!” 

“Karé? C’ai?” Poe said, as they slid in front of the  _ Supremacy _ ’s cargo bays. 

“Full speed ahead, boss.” 

“Vice Admiral Holdo, in the midst of our showboating, we’re dropping our soldiers, as per the original plan. Why don’t you see what’s going on with the star destroyer at mark 36-29-7 that just started firing on its own TIEs?” 

“ _ What _ ?!” Poe heard her say, but he switched off his comms.

“Admiral, we have incoming. Is that—?” Deeks started.

“That's Ren’s Interceptor. So much for getting in unnoticed…” Timons finished with a grim frown.

But even that seemed less of a threat, less of an issue, and Finn swiveled his gun so he could see the star destroyer that had started firing on its own starfighters. 

“Timons, can you pick up their comm signal?” he asked, and a moment later his own comlink started picking up the crackling signal of the other ship.

“—a  _ mutiny?” _

_ “ _ Sir, we can't—er—orders?”

“—come about, we’ll—with us.”

“ _ Stand down,  _ I repeat,  _ stand down!” _

_ “— _ calculated, routing shields—”

“Initiate jump in five—ee—”

Finn caught his breath, and there was a similar intake of breath from others watching as the Destroyer's engines went bright for a light speed jump.

“They can't make that jump without hitting the  _ Supremacy _ . What are they doing?” Timons asked, beginning to sound distressed.

“Timons, hail them. Why isn’t Holdo doing anything?” Poe demanded. 

“They mutineed. They aren't going to make the jump,” Finn said softly, as realization hit.

“I'm watching them—wait. You mean—” Klif responded from his own turret.

“No, wait, they can’t, we can help them,” Poe tried, suddenly forgetting that he was supposed to be commanding his own corner of the battle. “Tell them—”

But interference and explanation both became unnecessary as the mutinied star destroyer accelerated to near-light-speed, slicing clean through one massive wing of the  _ Supremacy.  _

The destroyer disintegrated as it rammed through the much larger ship, leaving utter destruction in its wake and severing the wingtip off of the flying capitol ship.

There were several heartbeats of silence across all comms as everyone tried to understand what they'd just witnessed. Then the impact reached them first, rocking the  _ Vapor  _ and destroying several TIEs along with a few X-wings and A-wings. 

“Damn it, who did we lose?” Poe asked, checking the rosters as they were knocked back from their perfect setup to enter the cargo bay. 

“Besides that whole damned star destroyer?” Holdo asked. “Did anyone get a name?” 

“That was the  _ Spectator _ , Admirals,” Tallie offered. 

“May the Force guide the worthy to their rest,” Rook said softly, only loud enough for the other gunners to hear. 

Finn shook his head and realized they still had Ren's Interceptor to deal with, troops to land, and a Jedi to rescue—hopefully, she was where they assumed she'd be and not over on the destroyed half of the  _ Supremacy _ .

“Alright, let's find our Jedi and get out of here. Anybody have visual on that TIE? We need to hold it off,” he said, because now he couldn't find it. Had it been destroyed in the explosion?

“It's over here, sir, but it's flying like it's been hit,” Bishop responded, and then cursed softly. “Missed! Still a fast little bastard. Sorry sir, it's coming around to your side.” 

And right on cue, the Interceptor and two accompanying craft crossed into his field of vision. He took his time lining up the shot on Ren’s slightly limping ship, thinking to disable and capture him rather than just destroy him. He focused down the targeting computer and breathed out to steady his aim and—

— _ on’t shoot! Finn! Don't shoot! _

He dropped the entire column like it had bitten him, because that sounded like Rey, who should have been on the  _ Supremacy  _ and well out of reach, Force or not. If she wasn't…

“Nobody fire! Poe! Don't fire, Rey is in one of those!” he yelled into the comms in a panic, and then remembered to switch to the Republic-wide channel.

“What?” Poe demanded. 

“Rey is in a TIE Interceptor! Don't shoot it down!” he cried, because the closer it drifted toward the  _ Vapor, _ the more likely it was someone would think they were a threat.

“Rey is— _ what _ ?” Poe began, and then flicked to the shipwide comm. “Alright, I’m gonna need my fighter bays cleared, repeat, clear the launch bays. Deeks, we’re turning her around and giving the Interceptor a chance to land inside.” 

“Admiral, are we  _ sure _ ?” Holdo asked. 

“If Finn is sure, I’m sure, ma’am. All Squadrons, start turning around, prepare your jumps,” Poe ordered. “We’re getting Rey and getting out of here.” 

“She’s coming in a little hot,” Timons reported. 

“Okay, match her speed,” Poe said. “Colonel, are our cargo bays clear?” 

Finn bolted for the shuttle bay to confirm, leaving Bishop to take over his gun. “Yes. Open the bay doors!” 

Finn didn’t register how fast they were going until he saw the cargo bay doors open through the small porthole, with his soldiers gathered in the hall. They were tearing across the length of the Supremacy, trying to get out of blast range, and trying to narrow in on that one TIE that wasn’t shooting at them—and didn’t really seem to be flying straight at all. Was Rey okay?

“Come on, come on,” Poe said through clenched teeth, as they coaxed the TIE into their cargo bay: delicate work at high speeds with a craft that was too big to maneuver properly. Then she was in—or in far enough. “Force field up! Shields up! We’re out of here!” 

Finn watched as Rey’s stolen Interceptor flew, shrieking, into the  _ Vapor _ ’s shuttle bay, and when they veered off, it skidded across the floor and came to a stop against the far wall with a hollow  _ thonk _ . Finn slammed the button to shut the bay doors and waited impatiently for the bay to pressurize. 

“All Squadrons. We’ve got her!” Poe reported, then flicked to his private comm. “Right? Tell me we’ve got her.” 

“We’ve got... _ an _ Interceptor,” Finn said. 

“I am not jumping to lightspeed until that’s confirmed,” Poe said, even as he continued to tell everyone  _ else  _ to jump out. 

“Program a jump to a random location,” Poe told Timons. “We’ll dump that Interceptor in case it’s hot, and jump home again.” 

Finn barely waited for the room to re-pressurize before he opened the door, and the change in pressure made his ears pop. 

“Rey! Rey, come on, you have to pop the canopy, sweetheart,” Finn called to her as he clambered over one of the Interceptor's panels to get to the cockpit.

Hands shaking, Rey reached up to push on the canopy, not sure which button it was in this stupid ship that was too big for her. But leaning in out of the shadow, Finn saw her face through the canopy, and his answering smile could give her strength to do anything.

“It’s her! Poe, we’ve got her!” Finn reported. 

“One final sweep, Timons. We the last ones?” Poe asked. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Then punch it.”


	11. Chapter 11

It had been an accident, really, finding Kylo Ren’s TIE fighter. She thought it was his, anyway, the lone Special Forces TIE in a hangar full of ordinary Interceptors, and she really _hoped_ it was his, because he was going to _lose it_ when he found it gone.

So, spite was what mainly kept her going.

There were stormtroopers crawling all over the place, probably trying to find her, so she had to wait, hidden behind a stack of crates, until there was an alarm calling them to their stations. Rey used the Force to trick them into looking the other way, and took her split second chance to dart to the TIE before the other pilots came running and the hangar turned into noise and chaos.

She piloted the TIE out with the others, and if anyone thought she was out of place, she didn’t hear it. Maybe they really believed Kylo Ren was flying this, and let him do whatever he wanted.

Rey swooped and swung her TIE after the others, grappling with the unfamiliar controls and trying to get the overly sensitive starship to fly the direction she wanted to go. It would have been a lot easier if she hadn't also been trying to dodge the shots taken at her by what appeared to be the entire fleet of Republic pilots, who definitely had it out for her ship. She had just started trying to figure out how to contact someone on her own side—these stupid controls made no sense at all and she hated them—and she began to wonder how seriously her head was injured if a TIE fighter was giving her trouble—when a massive shockwave sent her ship flipping end over end.

Rey looked behind her to see the Supremacy bursting into two pieces. She reached out, hoping to feel the loss of Snoke or Kylo Ren, but all she felt were the loss of all the stormtroopers and crew aboard the ship, and it very nearly crushed her.

By the time she got the TIE under control again and could see again through the tears, Rey had drifted too close to the _Vapor_ ’s guns. They started firing on her, and she dodged them clumsily until she found herself far too close to a turret—so close, in fact, that she could _just_ see a familiar face as the gunner was about to fire on her.

“No! Don't shoot! Finn! Don't shoot!” she yelled, and even though she knew he couldn’t hear her, she saw the gun’s muzzle drop as Finn sprang to his feet.

 _Thank the Force_ , she thought, and wheeled the TIE around to find a way back into the _Vapor_ , and back to her family.

...

Once on the Vapor, it was mostly on accident that Rey found the lever to release the canopy with a hiss. Finn was here. It was alright now, even if his look of horror at seeing her bloody face only agitated her more.

“Rey! Oh, Force, look at you. Come on, come here, sweetheart, I've got you,” Finn said as he shoved the canopy open the rest of the way. Rey was looking down at the assemblage of buttons and things as if confused, and in the end tried yanking at the straps on the harness that kept her in her seat. Finn leaned in and pressed the button to release the buckles and started gathering her into his arms.

Rey heaved an enormous, if shaky, sigh, but couldn’t speak.

“Kriffing _hell,_ sweetheart. I'm going to kill him,” Finn growled, reaching to pull her out of the cockpit. He got down from the Interceptor and held her close, petting her hair and checking her scalp for head wounds.

She leaned against him as if he was the only thing holding her up. Safe now, the adrenaline was starting to wear off, and she found herself shivering as she burrowed the uninjured side of her face against Finn’s chest.

“Rey?” he asked, and pulled back just to get a look at her, but she wavered and her knees buckled, and Finn caught her and scooped her up before she could hit the ground. He watched her frown as she fought her way back to consciousness and struggled, very briefly, to be put down.

Except she was about as strong as Sam, right now, and gave up when Finn only held her tighter.

“Hey, hey, come on,” he told her, worriedly taking in the sluggishly bleeding gash from a lightsaber and the not-inconsiderable bloodstain on her slightly singed shirt, and the dark marks around her throat and wrists. Her arm wraps were gone, and she looked almost naked without them. Finn spoke softly to her, trying to soothe the pained, concerned frown from her face as he carried her to the ship’s medbay.

“You're safe, Rey, you're safe and we're going home. They'll give you some really good painkillers in just a minute here and then you can sleep until we get back, and then Dr. K will patch you right up. I've got you, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere,” her told her when they reached the medbay, where a droid waited to evaluate her injuries.

He laid her carefully on a bed and moved back to let the droid work.

“No,” Rey said, and she was too weak to stand but not so weak she couldn't knock the droid back toward the far wall. She clung to Finn's jacket and tugged him close to her. “I don't want it. Just. Hold me, Finn. Where's Poe? Where's Sam?”

After taking a horrible-sounding breath, Rey added, “I need to see Luke.”

The droid, undeterred, bumped into Finn as if to move him, and Finn shuffled around to the other side of the bed. Rey resumed clutching at his jacket.

“Poe is on the bridge, Sam is home with Kes.” He paused, unsure of how to tell her that they hadn't been able to raise Luke on comms yet. “Luke is still on Ahch-to. We think.”

He untangled her fingers from his jacket so he could hold her hand between both of his. Lacking a chair, he perched on the edge of the bed against her hip.

“No,” Rey gasped. “I need to make sure he's okay. Stop touching me!”

This last bit was shouted at the droid, who she shoved back now in earnest, pushing it with the Force hard enough for it to spark against some medical equipment. Then she began to cry.

“Whoa, whoa, sweetheart,” Finn said, climbing into the bed to wrap her in his arms. “Hey, it'll be alright. Would you rather I go try to get him on comms right now, or do you want me to stay here? Will you let me clean you up?”

Still sobbing, Rey nodded, though she was unable to articulate what it was she wanted out of all those options. She wasn’t sure why she was crying, and that only further infuriated her.

All she wanted was Finn. Just Finn, and to forget. Maybe sleep. Then Poe, Sam, Luke, Chewie, Kes, in more or less that order. She’d like to stop hurting, too, but that was lower on her hierarchy of needs: she was hungrier than she was in pain, actually.

“Yes. Stay,” she finally managed, letting out the last few sobs in a sigh that felt better because she was pressed against Finn’s chest and Finn was all that existed in the world.

Finn rearranged them slightly so he could hold Rey with one arm and clean her up with the other. The poor, sparking droid had apparently taken the hint and was leaving Rey alone, but provided Finn with bandages and bacta to put on Rey's wrists and, when he convinced her to curl up closer, her ankles. He cleaned up the wound from Ren's lightsaber as much as he could, but it really needed more medical attention than he could provide if she didn't plan on having a truly wicked scar.

While he did this, he hummed softly and brushed gentle touches across her skin, soothing her until she had stopped shivering and then setting the first aid things aside.

“It's only a short jump home. We should be there soon, and then we can find you some dinner. You warm enough for now?” he asked once he had re-settled Rey in his arms with her head resting against his shoulder. He scratched gently up and down her arm, from the bandage at her wrist to her shoulder, and back, the motion repetitive and almost hypnotizing.

Rey let herself be hypnotized.

…

Poe sat through about half the chewing out he was due and checked in with his pilots (he wasn't as bad a commanding officer as certain people thought he was) before leaving Karé in command of the bridge, so when he arrived in medbay, Rey was quiet but shaking in Finn's arms.

“Oh thank the gods,” Poe said, rushing to her side. Worried by the sight of her so maimed, his voice took on a teasing edge, making light of the situation while gently admonishing her: “Rey, baby, sweetheart. What'd you have to go and do that for, huh? _We_ clear it by you before we get new tattoos. If you're gonna go pick a fight and get your face slashed up, your husbands would like to be consulted.”

Surprising herself, Rey reached for him, wanting them both to be there.

Finn chuckled softly as he moved to make room for Poe with them. “Says the man who went and crashed his X-Wing into a Star Destroyer.”

“Says the man who jumped out of a moving transport to hijack an AT-AA…” Rey murmured softly.

“ _Thank_ you.”

“Hey, don’t defend him. You're supposed to be napping or something,” Finn responded, and Rey answered by curling her fingers in his jacket more firmly. He wasn't going anywhere quickly, especially not if he wanted to take the jacket with him. He sighed and reached over Rey to take Poe’s wrist, effectively trapping him as well.

Poe smiled, letting himself sit and be relieved, and happy, and grateful. After a moment, he grabbed the medkit Finn had half-out and started using it to properly clean up the gash across her face. “So I’m guessing manbaby edgelord wanted you two to match? Good thing the Republic has this fantastic invention called _bacta_ , and they even use it on their people—”

“I don’t care if it scars,” Rey murmured, now kind of distant and withdrawn.

Poe glanced at Finn, resolving to coax her back out. She had clearly been in a dark place, there, and they didn’t want her slipping back into it.

“What if _we_ care? We have to look at you,” Poe said.

Rey startled, glaring open-mouthed at him just in time for him to laugh.

“Kidding! I’m just kidding, I was just making sure you were paying attention! Of course we don’t care. I’d honestly be relieved if you uglied up a bit more, you know, so people stop thinking I’m your _father_ when we go out.”

Rey actually laughed now. Not her usual laugh, but it was something.

“We all match now,” Finn said, thinking out loud. He gave Rey a reassuring squeeze when she winced as Poe cleaned off her face. “We all have scars from the First Order trying to kill us, and us surviving.”

“Hey! You can even get a face tattoo if you want, and then we'll all have sexy tattoo scars,” Poe said suddenly, remembering Rey's fascination with face tattoos. He still wasn't sure how serious she'd been, but the point was to make her smile and bring her back from wherever she seemed to have gone.

Rey shook her head, laughing softly. “No. I don’t want a face tattoo.”

After a few moments, Poe asked, “Hey, sweetheart? Any chance we can let the poor medi-droid come over here and take a look at you? Give you some happy juice, maybe?”

Rey didn't give any kind of affirmative, but when the medi-droid was summoned back, she didn't shove it away. She was still, if tense, as the droid administered a painkiller, though she had to admit, at least to herself, that it made things a good deal more tolerable to be hazy and a little detached.

But she still wasn't letting go of Finn and Poe. She was finally starting to feel whole again, pulling herself out of the dark by holding onto their light. If she had to let them go, she was half-afraid the darkness would call her back, and it made her cling to them even tighter.

The droid, luckily, merely followed its programming and started cleaning the gash on her face in earnest even though it had to maneuver around Finn and Poe to do it.

“It’s not too late for an eyepatch,” Poe said, keeping up a steady stream of jokes, at which Rey giggled quietly, but constantly, “or I can tell Dr. K to suture it so you have a lightning-bolt scar. Rokko could also tattoo ‘Kylo Ren Sucks’ on it.”

They were startled when the door opened to reveal a gaggle of interested parties, at the head of them BB-8, who honked and hooted indignantly at Poe and Finn for not fetching them immediately, and at Rey who wouldn’t be in this mess, probably, if she had only taken BB-8 with her.

Rose was there, too, and Timons, and so many others, all crowding in to check on Rey, that Poe actually flung out his arms. “I’m sorry, is there _anyone_ left on the bridge?”

“Sorry, Admiral, we thought since you were so relaxed about protocol that you didn’t care,” Karé said, on Timons’ comlink.

Poe winced, worried that if _everyone_ noticed, he’d be in for more than a dressing down when they got back. Still, nothing mattered now that they had Rey safe.

“I’ve still got the bridge, don’t get your panties in a twist. How’s my girl doing?” Karé assured him.

Finn looked down at Rey, who had scrunched down in his lap by degrees and seemed disinclined to sit up or shift at all.

“Better, I think, now that she has painkillers in her,” he responded. Rey, catching up to the conversation more slowly than usual, blinked twice before responding.

“I'm tired, and my head feels fuzzy, and my face kind of hurts but not as much as it did,” she informed the other woman. Finn gave her points for not slurring everything together, although she certainly sounded fairly out of it.

“Do you have Deeks and B squad up there?” Finn asked, because none of them had crowded into the door.

“ _Somebody_ has to help her fly this thing, Corporal,” Klif responded.

“Also there was nothing to shoot at and they got bored,” Deeks added.

“Those turrets are worse than cramped, so I don't blame them. Thanks, guys,” Finn told them.

Timons had crouched by the bed, carefully not touching Finn or Poe or the droid, but squeezing Rey's hand.

“We engaged the whole fleet to get you out,” she said, “and you went and rescued yourself.”

Rey gave Timons’ hand a squeeze in return.

“If you came in to get me, there were going to be heavy losses...I wanted to get out before that, if I could.” Then she quietly admitted, because the painkillers made her too sleepy to stop herself, “And Ren and Snoke are...my head feels like I need to wash it with scalding water and soap. I just wanted to get as far from them as I could, as fast as I could.”

At this admission, Finn hugged her silently and looked over her at Poe, tired to the depths of his heart of what this war was doing to all of them.

“It's okay, Rey, we all know you really just wanted to prove what a badass you are by stealing _Kylo Ren's_ own TIE right out from under his huge nose. How's that thing fly, by the way? Asking for a friend,” Poe asked the awkward silence, startling an actual laugh out of mostly everyone.

“Not like the _Falcon_ , at all. It’s very—” Rey paused, then dropped Timons’ hand for a second to pantomime a wobbly, looping sort of flight.

“The controls are a lot more sensitive and the ships are a balanced a lot differently than the _Falcon_ or our X-Wings,” Deeks provided over comms, though he couldn't see what Rey was demonstrating.

“They’re zippy little things, huh, sweetheart?” Poe asked, brushing hair back from her face. “Twice as fun as the starfighters we’ve got.”

Rey grinned and nodded slowly. “Yeah. They are fun.”

Poe leaned in to kiss her, motioning for the droid to give her some more drugs. “Maybe we should let you sleep, love, and all of us can get back to our stations.”

“But—” Rey started, and then she paused, her head already swimming.

“Finn will be here with you,” Poe said, stroking her hair. “And I’ll be right back. We’ll go see Sammy. We’ll all be here when you wake up. You just gotta sleep.”

“I don'wanna,” she murmured as the last visitor pulled the door closed behind them. She tried to explain that she was going to have nightmares, but it came out as mostly incoherent mumbling and she gave a miserable little sigh.

“Hey, rest—stop trying to use the Force, are you kidding me right now?” Finn asked as Rey adopted a look of intense concentration.

“Go to sleep. No dreams, I promise, just sleeping,” he reassured her, assuming that was why she was being restless—it seemed to be a recurring theme with the three of them, anyway.

She blinked once more and this time her eyes stayed closed and her breaths evened out in sleep.

Poe sighed, feeling a great weight lifting off him as she dropped off. He looked to Finn, leaning in to kiss his brow. “Gods, she had a day. You got this? You got her?”

Finn reached up to pull Poe close enough for a real kiss and then settled down beside Rey.

“Yeah, I've got her. I think we'll be alright. She's going to be out for awhile,” he said as he shifted so they would both be comfortable for the duration. When he looked down at Rey, she had a little half-frown on her face, and he sighed sharply even as he stroked her hair back away from the gash on her cheek.

“She did have a day. We'll take care of her, though. We're all safe now,” he told Poe, though he wasn't sure if he was trying to reassure Poe or himself. “I'll be happier when our gallant husband has flown us safely home, though.”

He gave Poe a teasing, cheeky grin.

“You and me both, buddy. We'll get her home to rest as  soon as possible. Who knows, I might be suspended again for...doing whatever it is Holdo’s decided I've done wrong this time.” Poe sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Or I'll take some leave. Either way, we'll have a nice long rest at home. And…I'm gonna keep trying to reach Master Luke.”


	12. Chapter 12

They hadn't been able to reach Luke by the time they landed. Rey was still out cold, which Finn guessed was a blessing since it gave Dr. Kalonia a chance to see to her wounds without also having to deal with her continued anxiety.

The doctor chased Finn off so she could work without him in the way, but he stayed nearby with Rey's holopad and continued trying to reach Luke. The commlink would connect, every single time, but there was no answer from the other side to indicate that Luke was attempting to answer it.

Finn was becoming concerned, but all he could really do was keep trying.

...

Poe was on his way back to Medical with Sam in tow when Connix caught up to him.

“That was some fancy flying, Admiral,” she said, by way of opening conversation.

Poe huffed. “Thanks. How many did we lose?”

Both of them cut to the chase. They liked that about each other.

She sobered, handing him a datapad. “Mostly fighters. A few turret gunners on the Raddus were hit. Twenty deaths: below projected for an assault of this size, if that helps.”

“It doesn't,” Poe said, reading each of the names. Then he looks up, “And how much trouble am I in?”

Connix laughed, and Poe appreciated it. “And I'd say this is a moderate level of trouble.”

“Oh, good,” Poe said with a grim smile, and bounced Sam in his arms. “Maybe the kid’ll soften ‘em up?”

“Considering your superiors are mostly women, Admiral, I wouldn't say that to them...”

“Oh my gods, you know that's not what I—”

“ _I_ know. They're in briefing room 3.”

…

Finn was taking a break from trying to call Luke, head resting back on the chair where he was sitting. He didn't realize he was sleeping with his mouth wide open and snoring slightly until Dr. Kalonia nudged his foot and he woke with a snort and started coughing because his throat was dry.

“You can go in now. She's still pretty out of it,” Dr. Kalonia said. Finn finally stopped coughing and stood. “She needs to rest, but she's being very resistant. I would prefer not to drug her again, but if she doesn't relax, I will.”

Finn understood.

“She's worried about Luke, and something she did fighting Ren and Snoke really...freaked her out. But I'll see what I can do—or maybe Sam and Poe can get her to sleep,” he told the doctor, and then went to check on his wife.

Rey was fretting and fidgeting with the blankets on her bed, even if it was so uncoordinated she looked drunk. When she heard the door open, she looked up and blinked several times before she seemed to focus on Finn.

“Doc said she gave you the good stuff,” Finn said gently as he went to join her.

“My face hurts,” she responded. There were bacta patches covering the full length of the cut and most of one eye.

“Yeah? It's killing me,” Finn joked, and at Rey's half-hearted glare, added, “I mean, because it's so beautiful, obviously.”

This got a lopsided smile out of her.

“Luke?” she asked, and when he paused before answering, she started shifting around as if she might be thinking about standing. Finn sat next to her on the bed, forestalling that.

“You need to rest that mighty Jedi mind of yours for a few hours before we go find Luke. Doctor's orders,” he told her.

Rey frowned. “We need to go to him. I think whatever he did for me—it was too much for him. I'm worried.”

“Wait, okay, you said Luke was there?”

Rey frowned. “N-not really, no. It was like a—a hologram, or a projection, in the Force. I’ve never heard of anyone doing anything that powerful before, and he faced Snoke and Kylo and he could have killed himself—”

Finn sighed and put a gently restraining hand on Rey's chest to stop her trying to sit up further than the current angle of the bed. She gave him a look and tried to sit up anyway.

“ _Rey_ ,” he said severely.

“ _Finn,_ ” she replied in the exact same tone.

“Sweetheart, you're of no use to Luke if you're too exhausted to even think. You had Ren and Snoke messing around with your head—and before you just shrug that off, remember you told Timons you felt like your brain needed to be sanitized,” he said in mild frustration.

She growled like something a little feral and bared her teeth at him, because she was _so tired_ and they couldn't find Luke and Finn was _stopping_ her.

And she had decided to forget the wrongness of Snoke prying into her thoughts and using them against her, and the terror of being so angry at him and at Ren for everything they'd done and would do that for a second, she could have easily killed them with no remorse.

She didn't deserve Finn’s patient kindness, not when she'd danced so close to that darkness.

She gave Finn a weak shove, but the implication was clear: _leave me alone._

Finn hadn't been expecting this, but it was the absolute opposite of calming Rey down. He stood to give her the space she wanted (thought she wanted? Something about her felt shaky and uncertain), but he didn't leave.

“Are you sure this wasn't also a little too much for _you_?” he asked her.

At that, Rey burst into tears.

“Oh, Force, love, I didn't mean to—I'm sorry. Let me help?” he asked, and she nodded, and he crawled into the bed next to her and pulled her close. “It'll be okay—we’ll go check on Luke, but you have to get some rest first so you can help.”

“It was too much,” she admitted softly.

He gave her a sympathetic squeeze.

“Speaking of ‘too much,’ you need to lie back and relax,” Dr Kalonia said, wandering in from the corridor. Finn had a feeling she'd been hovering out there. “Or I'll send you into exile along with him, just to get you to rest.”

“I'll rest,” Rey conceded. Then, as an afterthought, “But where are Poe and Sam?”

She would rest better if they were here, or if she at least knew for certain where they were.

“Poe's here, he's fine,” Finn promised. “He was just going to get Sammy and bring him here…”

…

“Admirals,” Poe greeted, waltzing into the room like nothing was wrong, with Sam on his hip. “And General. I haven't written my report yet, but you'll be glad to know Rey is stable. I'm on my way to see her now.”

“Poe,” Leia sighed. She was joined by Vice Admiral Holdo, Admiral Deso, and Rear Admiral D'acy.

Admiral Holdo spoke instead. “Next time we go in after _one_ person, Poe, let's not take the entire fleet.”

“One _Jedi_ ,” he corrected her, and glanced at Leia as he added, perhaps out of line, “A lot more people died trying to find Luke.”

“And how was she captured in the first place?” Leia asked, cutting him right back.

While Poe struggled to answer that, Holdo sighed and leaned in. “Poe, please sit down.”

She _never_ called him Poe.

He sat. “Look, we were thinking about fuel reserves—and—time. Do you think I’d’ve brought my son into a First Order trap if I thought it was going to be anything other than no big deal?”

Here he gave Deso something of a hard stare. “I’m not usually one to _under_ estimate a problem. But we all make mistakes.”

Poe realized suddenly that he was still juggling the datapad Connix had given him with the baby, and he laid the datapad out on the table, which Sam tried to reach for. “I’ll write the letters to the families myself, Admirals, General. They fought bravely, and we won a victory. The _Supremacy_ is critically hobbled, and what we should be worried about is going back out there and finishing them off—”

“There it is,” Holdo said, sitting back. “You can’t command a fleet like you command a squadron, Admiral. It’s a bigger picture, there are _political_ ramifications—”

“Great! Are you here to demote me back to Commander? That would genuinely make my day,” Poe said, his face flushing, though he tried not to get angry while holding his son. Maybe when he said _the kid’ll soften them up_ , he was talking about himself. “I couldn’t care less about the political ramifications.”

“ _Yes_ . You _do_ ,” Holdo said firmly, and when Poe looked to Leia for help, Leia actually let her talk, giving it her blessing. “Poe, this is a political war. This is fascism against a democratic republic. You’re in this fight because you think people matter. Not just the Jedi. Not just people you’re related to or married to. Do you see how it could _look_? ‘Republic Admiral engages fleet for his own designs, gets twenty of our brave boys and girls killed to save Jedi wife’?”

“But—that’s not what happened—” Poe tried.

“But it could _look_ that way. We need to uphold the ideals of the Republic in every way, or we’re not going to win this. Or, worse, it would be better if we didn’t win.”

The room is quiet as Poe considers this. “So what was I supposed to do?”

“Fly like an _Admiral_ ,” Holdo says. “Not a flyboy in a bigger ship. There’s a bigger picture. There’s protocol. There’s not shooting first and not fighting the battle by yourself when you’re the one-pip Rear Admiral.”

Poe sucked on his teeth to keep himself from snapping back, and let her just talk. He resented it as a matter of principle, but maybe later he’d realize she was right.

He sighed. “Look. Maybe you’ve got the wrong guy. I can suggest half a dozen lieutenants who would make a better admiral than me, however many pips. Save everyone the headaches and just demote me back where I want to be.”

Now Leia smiled, and Poe began to think this was a conspiracy. “That is exactly why we can’t.”

Poe rolled his eyes. He felt like he was being reprimanded like a teenager, so he chose to act like one. “Okay, then, what’s my punishment for not acting like an Admiral, or whatever?”

“You’re taking Rey on the _Millenium_ _Falcon_ to see to Master Skywalker. We’re told Rey will need some considerable recovery time, and Master Luke might need—help,” Deso instructed.

“Like, medical attention? Wouldn’t sending a doctor be better?”

“Probably not the kind of help he needs.”

Poe waited, rescuing the datapad from Sam chewing on it. “So, Finn is…”

“Able to assign himself to this mission if he wishes,” Leia said.

“So you’re benching us. Again.”

“ _We’re trying to not let you kill yourselves_ ,” Leia said crisply. “Dismissed.”

Leia waited until Poe was out of the room, and until Deso and D'acy had gone, before she dropped her head to her hands.

“That one’s a troublemaker,” Holdo told her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “I like him.”

“Me, too,” Leia sighed.


	13. Chapter 13

Rey had eventually fallen asleep, her body demanding the rest she didn't want to give it, and in no uncertain terms. She fought to stay awake to at least wait for Sam and Poe, but when Finn started gently scratching her arm, she found herself drifting.

When he had started singing, softly and a little off-key, the tension that had been keeping her somewhat aware slowly dissipated.

Finn felt fairly certain he'd sung the same song three times before Rey finally  _ truly _ fell asleep, so he sang it one more time just to be sure.

_ Goodnight, my someone, goodnight, my love, _ __   
_ Sweet dreams to carry you home to me. _ __   
_ The stars are shining, they're bright above, _ _   
_ __ So goodnight, my someone, goodnight…

The words were almost certainly wrong (heard only once or twice from some holo Deeks liked and occasionally sang the songs from under his breath when he thought no one was listening) but it did the trick anyway, and he let the song trail into quiet when he'd reached the end.

For a brief half-hour, the room was nearly silent. Finn was fairly sure he may even have dozed, but when the door clicked softly open, he was wide awake.

“Hey, buddies,” Poe whispered. “How we doing?” 

Sam seemed to understand that they were having quiet time, and didn't immediately demand in the loudest way possible to see his mom—but he did reach for her and gave a soft “Mom! Mom mom mom mom  _ mom _ ,” by way of hinting. 

Finn smiled at him and he added a few  _ Dad _ s in there as well.

“Hey, my Sammy, were you a good boy at school?” he asked him, and Sam gave him a very affirmative nod. “That's my guy. Thank you.”

“Everything alright?” he asked Poe as Rey, of course awakened, opened her eyes. 

She wordlessly shifted and held her arms out for Sam.

“I dunno if I should give a baby to a woman who’s all hopped up on drugs,” Poe teased. “That would be irresponsible. Go on, go see your spice-Mama.” 

Rey whined, trying not to laugh. “You’re mean. And ugly.” 

“Ugwee Papa!” Sam repeated, gleefully. 

“There, see, now you’ve got him confused,” Poe admonished. “He’s going to think ‘ugly’ means ‘rakishly handsome.’”

Finn laughed as Sam made a grab for his mother’s long hair and tugged. She winced, and Finn gently disentagled Sam’s fingers from her hair.

“Gentle, Sam. Be gentle with mama,” he said, and the baby instead reached for her neck to bury his face in it. He was clearly not letting go any time soon, going so far as to close his eyes and settle heavily against her chest.

“Woo, boy, looks like someone had a big day today,” Poe said, rubbing Sam’s back. 

“Guess you’re not going anywhere any time soon,” Finn said cheerfully.

“Gotta find Luke,” Rey reminded them.

“ _ Relax… _ ” Poe said. He ran his fingertips down Rey's cheek, on the uninjured side. “We're definitely going, as soon as you're cleared, or if we can get a doc to come with, I guess. Leia’s worried that what you said Luke did might have...overtaxed him.”

“But he'll be okay,” Rey said. “Right? He'll be okay?”

She looked between Poe and Finn and started making an uncoordinated attempt at trying to get up. Finn could feel her shutting off her pain, trying to ignore it so she could get up and survive. It felt like an old, ugly, Jakku-scarred part of her rearing its head again. 

It also upset Sam, who opened his eyes and grumbled before snuggling himself more securely to Rey's chest. 

“What if we get everything else together so we can go as soon as Dr. K says you're okay to leave?” Finn asked, trying to placate Rey into resting just a little longer. He was half counting on her unwillingness to remove Sam when he was so clearly in need of snuggling with his mama.

“Do  _ not  _ sit up,” Poe said, taking the more authoritative approach, like that was going to work on his wife. “Speaking of  _ overtaxed _ .” 

When Rey glared at him, demanding an answer, Poe threw up his hands and sighed. “We don’t know. We’re going to go check.”

Rey continued to glare, but stayed lying down. “If he’s in any trouble, it won’t be anything a doctor can fix. So if you don’t want me getting up, you had better roll me out on this thing. I’ll sleep on the way.” 

Poe rolled his eyes. “I don’t think she meant leave  _ instantly... _ ”

“Rey, if you aren't rested, you're not going to be any help to him either. What are we supposed to do if we have  _ two _ overtaxed Jedi and no one to help them?” Finn asked. “We're not saying we have to wait for days. But if it were an emergency, you can be certain Leia would be more concerned about doing something immediately.”

The door opened, and Dr. Kalonia stepped into the room.

“This really doesn't look much like resting. Do I need to ban visitors until you get the idea?” she asked Rey.

“When can I leave? I need to help Luke,” Rey demanded.

“When I'm satisfied that you've rested long enough not to hurt yourself helping Luke,” Kalonia said.

“... _ Fine _ ,” Rey said, finally, after a short staredown. She scrunched down as if getting comfortable, re-situated Sam so he was also comfortable, and closed her eyes with a determination that made Finn smile. If all that stood between Rey and helping Luke was sleep, then by the Force, she was going to  _ sleep _ .

Poe leaned down to kiss her, and then kissed Finn. “Okay. I'll go get the  _ Falcon _ prepped, see if Chewie wants to come. We can leave tomorrow. You want to be our medic, or do you need to stay, or…?”

Poe trailed off, sounding a little distracted. 

“I can go. But shouldn't we take an actual medic?”

“I’ll send you with a stasis pod. If he needs more medical help than you can provide, you can stabilize him long enough for you to bring him back here,” Dr. Kalonia said.

They agreed, and while Poe left to see to prepping the  _ Falcon,  _ Finn and Dr. Kalonia started stocking a medkit and Rey and Sam slept—peacefully, to all appearances.

When Kix rushed into the room, looking a little winded, Finn raised his eyebrows in mild concern. 

“Colonel, I’m so glad I found you before you left,” he said. 

“Only barely, you'd have missed me if you'd been five minutes later. Is everything alright, Colonel?” Finn asked, motioning the other man to a chair. “Why were you running?”

A medidroid rolled up and handed Kix a cup of water before going back to whatever it had been doing.

Kix chuckled at the droid’s sweetness—and drank a few swallows—before telling Finn, “I have some excellent news! You may want to sit down for this one, Colonel.” 

Belatedly, he sat, too. 

Kix’s excitement was infectious, and Finn smiled at him as he pulled a chair over to sit across from him.

“I'm glad it's good news, but what is it? Something with the stormtroopers?”

(Finn very nearly asked if Lightbridge had been fired, but that seemed a little petty.)

Kix was practically vibrating, but he delivered the news evenly. “Timons did it, Finn. She found a living relative of yours. And you’ll never believe this, but I swear it’s true. We think it’s your mother.” 

Finn felt his world narrow for a split-second of hope before logic caught up with him. Believing it for just a second before he shut it down felt like a punch in the stomach, and he stood up. 

“Ah, no, I’m sorry. My parents died, Kix, back when I was kidnapped. We saw it back when we rescued Sam. Rey had a vision—that was why we gave Sam his name, because that's what my parents named me,” Finn said, assuming there had to be a mistake, unwilling to let himself hope for even a second. “It  _ can’t _ be.” 

“Finn—no, we checked. We double-checked, and it's not a mistake,” Kix said gently, surprising FInn by reaching out to take his hand. “A hospital on Toprawa found some old records with a DNA match to an amnesia patient. And we matched the name she used with a communication in the vicinity of a planet called Jedha. It seems she’s there, or was there, recently.” 

Finn sat again as everything seemed to grind to a halt. He blinked at Kix. He remembered the vision Rey had had and shared with him, of what they thought were his mother and father trying to shelter him in the chaos of what had clearly been a mass kidnapping by the First Order. He didn’t think anymore survived those.

He had so many questions he needed to ask, but he couldn't decide which was most important. Instead, he continued sitting in stunned silence, processing all of it. 

“I know this is big news, Colonel Dameron,” Kix said, squeezing Finn’s arm. “We’re all very happy for you. Timons will follow along with the report. Do...you think you’ll go to find her?”

Then Kix looked up and around. “How’s Ms. Dameron?” 

“She's sleeping, so that we can go check up on Master Skywalker. But—” but he could go see his mother. His mother.  _ He had a mother. _ “Of course I'll go to her, I'd go right  _ now _ if they'd let me. Can I be the one to contact her? I mean—is that allowed?” 

Kix laughed. “Finn, of course. You’re still a Colonel in command of the SRTF. I’m also glad to send something if you like. I don’t know if we’ll get a response, however. Jedha is very remote, and half blasted-out.”

Finn got up to pace.

“Okay. But I have to go with Rey and Poe to Ahch-to, though. I'm their medic, and I want to be with Rey while she’s... But—my mother…” He trailed off, still pacing.

He really needed to talk to Rey and Poe.

“I could go in your place, Colonel,” Kix offered, gallantly. “I actually  _ am  _ a medic, you know. It’s entirely up to you. I just wanted to let you know.”

“I'll let you know. I want to talk to Rey and Poe first. Timons is going to give me everything you found? Is there a picture?” he asked, and Kix smiled.

“I haven't seen Timons’ report, but I don’t think so.”

He looked at Finn’s bewildered expression and stood to put a hand on his shoulder.

“This is not supposed to stress you out. It's been this long—you don't have to decide right this second whether to go to her or go with your spouses. For one thing, Ms. Dameron appears to still be asleep, so that's probably at least five minutes even if she wakes up right now.” 

He chuckled when Finn gave him a small, but genuine, smile.

“I'll leave you to it. You know where to find me if you need me to step in as medic,” Kix added, and then he took his leave.

Finn watched him go, feeling oddly detached from his own thoughts, like he was watching himself respond from a short distance away. He turned quietly and walked back to Rey's room, lest one of the droids should notice he was standing in the middle of the floor like a stunned tauntaun. Once the door was shut and he was safely out of view of anyone but his sleeping wife and son, he let out a breath he'd been holding and dropped back into a chair.

At least here he could hyperventilate in relative peace.

Half of him still believed this was some kind of mistake—hadn't he seen his mother and father die? Hadn't he heard his mother wailing as he'd been ripped from her arms and their house broke around them? There had been TIEs screaming overhead and the sounds of explosions and chaos and panic. When the First Order stole children, they left no survivors. It was bad practice to do so.

Except, except… _ except _ , it seemed, they had. Finn wondered if others had survived that attack, or if his mother had been the only one. Kix had said nothing about finding a father, so he assumed his father had died in that attack. His heart  _ hurt _ at the thought of his mother mourning a dead husband and a kidnapped son who she could never hope to see again—though if she was indeed an  _ amnesia  _ patient, maybe she didn’t remember he ever existed. This was, somehow, almost worse. 

Finn watched Sam and Rey, both blissfully unaware of his current crisis, and decided he wasn't going to even try to imagine what that must have been like. How could he let her spend even one more minute, unnecessarily, in a world where her she thought he was dead, or captured by the First Order, or couldn’t remember her son. Even Luke, surely, would forgive him for needing to go to his mother.

He couldn't believe that they'd found his mother at all, much less found her alive somewhere in the galaxy, that she was truly out there in physical space somewhere. She might be sleeping now, or drinking tea, or laughing—any number of normal human things that he also did every day.

Finn wanted to meet her, suddenly, worse than he'd ever wanted anything. He wanted to hear her voice and see her face and give her a  _ hug. _

“Finn?” Rey asked, in a small voice, opening her eyes and reaching for him, and for the first time in what felt like too long concerned about  _ him _ . She felt his mood shift in the Force, and actually getting out of herself helped a lot. “Finn. Are you all right?” 

Finn looked up and saw Rey holding a hand out toward him to get his attention, but wasn't paying enough attention to catch her question. 

He meant to tell her to go back to sleep, but instead went to take her hand and sit next to her on the bed. “Kix just came by to talk to me. He wanted to let me know, um...They found my mom.”

He paused, absorbing the words he'd just said.

“She isn't dead,” he added, for the sake of clarity.

Rey blinked, her features approaching a frown. “But we...we saw…”

“I know, I remember. But we didn't see her actually die, did we? We thought we did, but they double-checked, it's really her. Kix is  _ sure _ . DNA tests. Timons is sending me her report later, but she's out there. I could go see her...basically as soon as I can contact her,” he explained, trying to explain why he was currently about to have a meltdown about not being able to go to two places at once.

“Oh,” Rey said, and squeezed his hand, running her other up and down Sam’s back. 

“You should go to her,” she said finally. “If I were your mother and—I kind of am—” she patted Sam with a grin, “I couldn’t imagine waiting to see you once I found out.”

Finn shrugged unhappily. 

“Well, she doesn't know. She won't know until I contact her, which I'm not going to do until I know I can go immediately,” he said. “I couldn't do that to her.”

He looked down at their clasped hands, feeling like he either would betray his mother by choosing to go rescue Luke, or betray Luke by going to find his mother.

“I'm worried about Luke. If there's anything wrong, I want to help him, too. He's also family, you know?” he told Rey. “Anyway, she may not actually remember me. The DNA we have belongs to an amnesia patient, so maybe she doesn’t even know I exist.” 

“Oh, no.” Rey’s face got a bit pinched at that, like she couldn’t quite remember something that was important. Then she sighed. “Luke  _ is  _ family… What if we go take care of Luke, and then we go meet your mom. When do we leave?”

“Nice try,” Finn said, as she tried to sit up again. “Poe still hasn't come back, and now we have to wait for Timons to bring me her report.”

He put the hand not holding Rey's on her shoulder. “You're going to upset Sammy,” he added.

“No, I’m not,” Rey said petulantly, but she was tired, too, and didn’t put up much of a fuss. “Wake me up when Timons or Poe get here.” 

Rey grumbled, but finally she smiled, her eyes beginning to close again. “I’m excited to meet your mother. I’m sure she’s just as amazing as you are, my love.” 

Finn bent to kiss Rey's forehead. He rested his hand on Sam's back for a moment, just watching him sleep on Rey's chest.

“I'm excited to meet her. I hope she'll come visit and meet everyone,” he said, but he was somehow confident this would be the case. So far the stormtrooper families had generally been eager to learn about their long-lost loved ones’ lives.

Once Rey had fallen back to sleep, Finn stood and went back to his chair, just listening to the quiet combined breaths of his wife and son, letting the sound calm him and ease away the anxiety. He would meet his mother soon enough—but first, there was Luke to rescue.

…

“You found your  _ what _ ? Buddy, that’s great!” Poe exclaimed when he heard, and tugged Finn into a hug. They were on the  _ Falcon _ , with Rey propped up in a bed and Sam playing with BB-8 on the floor.

“‘Bout time Sammy had a grandma—and no, it’s still weird if my dad goes on dates,” he said, willfully ignorant on that front. 

“What if she's... I don't know, what if she doesn't want anything to do with any of this? There's not much in the report about what happened to her after I was kidnapped, except that she had amnesia of some kind, about ten years ago,” Finn said. “It all might have traumatized her into forgetting all about me.” 

Rey sighed at him, well-aware that he was concocting worst-case scenarios so that he'd feel prepared, even if they were beyond unlikely. It was like he couldn't help it.

“If she does, you still have what you started with. You still have all the rest of your family. How many of the stormtroopers’ families have been completely unwilling to have anything to do with them?” she asked gently.

“None. There were some rough starts, but they've all at least stayed in contact,” he replied. He scrubbed a hand over his hair and crouched to Sam's level, watching him play with BB-8.

“I'm nervous,” he admitted, looking up between Poe and Rey.

Rey actually laughed. 

When he glared at her, she held out a hand in apology and he stood to take it. “I'm sorry, love. It's just—that's really obvious. And understandable.”

“She's gonna love you. How could she not?” Poe asked. “You're only perfect, and a hero of the galaxy. Once she knows it's  _ you _ , it's gonna be a done deal, man. You should contact her now. We don't know how long we'll be with Luke or how long the message will take to get to her. What planet did you say they found her on?”

“I’m not sure I did—she’s living on Jedha,” Finn said.

“What, that little wasteland planet?” Rey asked in surprise. She wasn't even aware people actually  _ lived _ there. Then again, it hadn't exactly occurred to her to ask before now. “Isn’t it like…all desert?”

Finn’s face was so carefully neutral that Rey immediately started laughing again. Maybe she was still a little high.

Poe at least tried to hide his laugh. “What? No. No, that’s crazy, Rey. Jedha is definitely not  _ anything  _ like a certain planet that begins with a ‘J’ and ends in ‘akk—ack!” 

This last sound came in the form of a cry as Finn swatted his ass, and he crashed into the bulkhead in a manner that did not look at all safe, and therefore amused Sam a great deal. He clapped animatedly as Poe rubbed his backside. “It’s a  _ cold  _ desert, for one thing.”

“ _ Anyway _ . At least she isn't in the complete middle of nowhere. Getting a message to her shouldn't be difficult. She's in one of the cities on the far side from where they tested the Death Star. I guess they managed to scrape together some settlements there…” Finn said. 

He knelt to tickle Sam, who shrieked with laughter and made a grab for his dad's hands. Finn grinned at him.

“You going to meet your grandmother soon, Sammito? What do you think?” he asked the baby.

“Abbo?” Sam asked, clearly associating  _ grandmother _ with  _ grandfather _ , whom he knew well. 

“You're killing me, kid,” Poe said. “He's too old to date.”

“Nice talk from you,” Rey said. “Are we not having sex anymore after you turn forty? Finn and I will still be in our twenties and thirties...”

Poe grumbled. 

“Jedha is a  _ cold _ desert?” Finn asked, single-mindedly, “How cold are we talking? And  _ why _ ? A desert isn’t bad enough, so it has to be  _ cold _ ?”

He settled next to Rey with a heavy sigh, and she patted his knee in sympathy.

“You can always stay with Luke,” Poe suggested. “We’ll send desert girl to scope it out.” 

“Nice try,” Rey said. 


	14. Chapter 14

The island with the Jedi Temple on it was—really beautiful, actually, and Poe and Finn fell silent where they had been gossiping in the cockpit as it came into view. Sam, from Finn’s lap, exclaimed loudly. Rey was sleeping in the bunkroom, and they decided to let her stay there. 

“Maybe we could retire here, too, someday?” Poe suggested. 

“What about we vacation here instead? I like the farm…” Finn said, but he too was admiring the view. “And you would hate it.” 

“Yeah…too quiet,” Poe agreed.

“What are those little birds? They look like they can hardly fly,” Finn said, and then gasped as one he'd been watching fell suddenly from the sky to plummet into the water. He hadn't expected to be  _ right _ about their flying abilities!

“Wait. They swim! Like ducks!” he asked as the fallen bird bobbed up to the surface, a tiny pale dot in the dark sea.

He looked down at the little collection of huts, but there was no one about. “Which one is Luke's? Do you think he's in it? What if we can't find him?” 

“I am currently worried about where to  _ land _ ,” Poe said, “but these are the coordinates Rey gave, and it’s not a big island…” 

Poe eventually found a spot that was clear of birds and other animal life, though immediately a squad of small humanoids wearing woolen dresses began marching down towards them. They didn’t look dangerous, but…

“Ah, Finno? You wanna see if Rey is feeling able to get out of bed? And ask her who the, ah...all the nuns are?” 

Poe made his way down the ramp with a smile on his face and BB-8 at his heels. The air was wet and cool, and he wished he had remembered his jacket, but he didn’t have time to worry about that as the three lead nuns shoved a broom, a sharp stick, and some other primitive farming implement in his face. 

“Whoa! Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry. We come in peace,” he said, raising his hands. “We’re here about Master Skywalker?” 

This was apparently the wrong thing to say, and they chittered at him in a language he couldn’t understand (it  _ might  _ have been similar to Gungan, but his Gunganese was terrible), and he could only raise his hands higher and back up the ramp. “I’m sorry! Sorry, do you speak Basic? Rey, I’m here with Rey!” 

“Oh, they don’t like me, either,” Rey said from behind him, and Poe looked back to see Finn carrying Rey in his arms. 

At the sight of Rey, the nuns threw their hands up and grumbled, but they also lowered their improvised weapons, which Finn felt was about as positive as reaction as they were going to get at this point. 

“We need to go up to get to the huts,” Rey said from Finn's arms. “I mean, clearly. But we should take the stairs instead of just climbing up the hill. It's fun, but it's not  _ do it with your wife clinging to your back like a concussed Ewok  _ fun. You sure you don’t want me to walk?”

Finn rolled his eyes, because they'd already been over this.

“You’re not walking. If I get tired, Poe will help. Right, buddy?”

“Ah, haha,” Poe said, pulling on a raincoat and fashioning a makeshift poncho for Sam out of a garbage bag. “Yeah,  _ right _ . I'm carrying Sammy and that'll be hard enough. BB-8 will help. They never get tired.”

“You have an entire arm that literally never gets tired.”

“Yes but my  _ legs _ . You want me to fly us up there? I'm sure I could coax some hovering out of the  _ Falcon  _ to drop you guys off…”

“That might not endear us any further to the locals,” Finn suggested. He shifted Rey a little in his arms and she wrapped her arms over his neck and interlaced her fingers to try to help.

He was pretty sure that would just make his neck hurt, but it was sweet and she looked sleepy again anyway (he was beginning to wonder if her body wasn’t making up for months of exhaustion in addition to whatever Snoke and Ren had done to her), so he said nothing. Anyway, the breeze coming off the sea was a little cool and her hands were keeping the back of his neck warm.

“[I could carry you  _ while _ you're carrying her and still beat Poe up the stairs,]” Chewie rumbled to him, very nonchalantly, and he laughed.

“I mean, that’s...probably true,” Poe laughed, shutting the gangway so none of the curious little birds would get in. 

“Hopefully that won't become necessary, but if it does, you'll know about it,” Finn replied. 

Chewie looked at him askance, as if in doubt of Finn's strength or endurance. Perhaps both.

“[... Don't trip]” he warned, and then gestured for Poe and Finn to go ahead of him—if anyone fell, he had a better chance of catching them from the back than from the front. 

The nuns preceded them at first, still scolding them soundly, though they soon detoured to croak at Chewie—this sounded almost conversational, and somehow they understood each other and managed what appeared to be an amicable conversation. Finn and Poe looked at each other, surprised. Chewie did kind of have a way with people...

Poe was tired after what felt like a hundred steps, but, looking up, it seemed like they had got nowhere at all. 

“Okay, let’s switch,” he said, huffing and puffing, “let Rey walk, and you carry me now.”

“Don't think she'll be doing much walking,” Finn replied cheerfully. Rey was asleep, her head lolling over to the side so it rested against his chest. He glanced down at her and smiled—even if she was heavy, she looked absurdly content, and must have been comfortable assuming he would neither drop her nor trip, because she was truly out.

But Finn’s arms were seriously killing him, and they weren't quite halfway up the long trail of steps. He turned hesitantly to Chewie.

“I'm afraid I'm going to drop her,” he admitted, and Chewie came over to take her from his arms, though not before giving him a reassuring pat on the head with one heavy, furry hand.

[“I was certain you would give up much sooner,”] the Wookiee admitted as he shifted Rey slightly in his arms.

“Need me to take Sam for a minute?” Finn asked Poe, turning to get a better look at both his husband and his son. Sam was looking around with wide eyes, clearly enamored of the new surroundings.

“Nah, man,” Poe panted, “I got this. I got this. How does an old guy get around a place like this?”

“Slowly,” said a new voice, and all of them nearly jumped out of their skins to see a bearded man come out from behind a rock. For half a moment Poe thought it was Luke, and was glad to see him, but the beard was the wrong color, and—

“Wedge Antilles?!”

The three of them gaped at the ace pilot. Poe had been too starstruck to talk to him much on base, and when he had gone he assumed he was with Lando and his people, again. 

Apparently he had been with  _ Luke  _ this whole time. 

“You’re—here. With Master Skywalker?” 

“Yeah. Or I  _ was _ , before he—is it some sort of Jedi thing?” he asked, glancing at the sleeping Rey. “Luke is...well, you better come see.” 

Finn, once he got over his surprise at seeing not Luke, but Wedge, followed. Wedge was silent as they walked, though his silence didn't seem unfriendly so much as worried.

“He said something about helping Rey, and went up to meditate. I went to check on him when he didn't come back down and found him passed out on that rock he sits on,” Wedge explained. “He doesn't seem to be suffering, but he just—he won't wake up.”

Wedge sighed as they arrived at a small hut. He pushed the door open and gestured for them to step inside, even though the interior of the hut was not designed for so many people.

Chewie laid Rey down on spot on the floor when Wedge laid out a blanket; she was still asleep, approaching unconscious. 

“Uh, Rey?” Poe asked, sitting worriedly beside her, but Finn found himself drawn to the figure lying on a low pallet in one corner.

The hut was dark, lit by windows and one or two candles, and Luke Skywalker lay like he was arranged for a funeral. Wedge had cared for him, obviously, changed his clothes and even combed his hair, lovingly. And really he just looked asleep. There was a sort of waiting feeling around him, and Finn wondered if whatever was waiting was important enough to wait for.

“Rey, love,” Poe said, crouching beside her, but she shivered and rolled away. Was she getting worse?

Finn turned away from Luke, resigned for the moment to not waiting, and looked over at Rey, frowning in concern. She looked miserable—nothing like Luke, curled now on her side to face away from them. 

“Sweetheart? Can you wake up for me?” he asked, unsure if she was having nightmares or if she just felt sick. Or maybe this was from being in such close proximity to Luke—was that how the Force worked?

“Rey?” Poe tried again, but she was out, like, scary asleep, and now Sam was starting to cry, too. 

“Uh, okay. Stop me if this sounds crazy, but maybe there’s bad Force mojo in here,” Poe ventured, looking between Luke, Wedge, and Finn. 

“Bad Force mojo? Like…what exactly? Should we take Rey to a different hut?” Finn asked. He turned to Wedge, who looked as confused as Poe. “Have you noticed anything weird?” 

Wedge only shrugged his shoulders.

“I'm about as Force sensitive as a turbolaser. I don't even know when he got like that exactly, just that that's how he was by the time I went to check on him,” the pilot said.

He went to Luke's side and sat down to take one of his hands briefly before resting it back on his chest. Then he looked over at Sam, who was still crying.

“She usually wakes when he cries, right?” he asked, concern edging into his voice.

“Yeah...ahh. Let’s try another hut. Who knows how Force Sensitive the  _ kid  _ is,” Poe said, standing up. “Chewie?” 

Chewie had been staring sadly at Luke, but wuffed as he got up to lift Rey again. 

“Yeah, I mean, there’s another hut—a kind of guest hut I sometimes use when…” Wedge offered, but trailed off. 

Sam stopped crying immediately as they stepped outside, and Poe and Wedge looked at each other. 

“You know, I mean, I do get headaches sometimes, sitting in there with him,” Wedge ventured. “But I’m not…” 

“Look, the way my wife talks about it, the Force is in everything,” Poe corrected. He looked around, and then covered Sam’s ears. “Also, I think it’s probably communicable. So.” 

“How impertinent!” Wedge huffed, and then laughed. “Maybe so. Come on, the other hut is over here…”

Finn looked back over his shoulder, the question-unasked feeling fading as they got further away from the hut. He thought about asking Poe or Wedge if they felt it too, but he didn't even know how to describe it without sounding foolish. After all, the atmosphere just felt lighter all around out here—maybe whatever weird Force thing Luke had going on right now was giving him a weird vibe in general.

Whatever it was, Finn was as relieved as Sam seemed to be when they settled Rey in the other hut. She seemed to be resting easier, too, after several minutes.

“Okay, so that's weird,” Finn commented.

“I hope he’s okay, or—will be?” Poe asked, and then turned to Wedge. “Did you try true-love’s-kissing him yet?”

Wedge shook his head. “Dameron… This isn’t a fairy tale, but, I mean, yes, of course.”

Rey began to murmur, now, and sat up abruptly. “Sorry, whoa. What—um? Where’s Luke? Did we make it?” 

“Rey! How are you feeling?” Finn asked, settling down next to her and taking her hand. “Luke is in the other hut. But the Force is doing something weird—it made you worse, and it made Sam cry. It didn't feel right, so...so we brought you here.” 

Sam, earlier distress forgotten, was happily crawling around the hut and picking up bits of stone, which he then tried to put in his mouth without getting caught by BB-8.

“Sammo, buddy,” Poe said, wrangling the baby between him and his droid. “No. Rocks are not for eating, son.” 

Poe decided to scoop up Sam and plop him down in Rey’s lap, sitting cross-legged across from her. “Okay, so we’ve got one Jedi in a coma, and our other Jedi can’t go near him without fainting—” 

“I did not faint!” Rey protested. 

“Completely  _ swooned _ ,” Poe heaped on her, laughing. “Finn, maybe you and me go have a look at him, see what we can do for him. Rey should rest.” 

Rey reached over Sam to punch Poe in the shoulder. 

“Oww!” 

“No teasing your wife when she's sick, it's rude,” she told him. When Finn laughed, she punched him too.

“Ow—hey! No hitting! You're supposed to set an example for Sam!” he yelped.

“I am! It's called ‘how not to take  _ crap _ from anyone,’” she responded. Sam giggled.

“Crap!” the baby cackled.

“Curse jar!” Finn called, so Rey punched him again.

“That’s hardly a curse,” Poe defended. 

Sam, laughing, slapped his hands against Finn’s chest like this was a new game. 

“I think discretion is the better part of valor on this one, buddy,” Poe said, tilting Sam backwards into Rey’s arms, to tremendous giggles. “Let’s get out of here while we have the chance!” 

They ran out of the hut, laughing, while behind them Wedge asked Rey if she would like some tea. 

They were confronted, not by the angry nuns this time, but by a flock of the curious birds. 

Finn eyed them suspiciously, but they seemed unconcerned. In fact, they merely clucked to each other and then looked back at them, eyes wide.

“Also weird. This island is weird,” Finn commented. One of the birds squawked at him and flapped its funny little wings before hopping toward him. 

“Uh. Hey, uh, little fella, what—that's my shoelace,” he said to the bold one that was currently engaged in trying to remove his shoelace. “Please stop!” he added as it succeeded and took off running, wings flapping like mad. 

So now one of his shoes was missing a significant length of shoelace… Because apparently the small birds were menaces.

The one who had stolen his lace had climbed to the top of a tall rock, and it screeched loudly, presumably to let its brethren know about its prize. It was a cocky little thing, which was especially hilarious coming from a feathery cylinder with tiny wings.

Finn liked them.

“Think your dad's chickens would object?” he asked Poe mildly, nodding to the shoelace thief.

“Dad would have a cow. Invasive species, or something. We’re  _ not  _ taking one home, Finn,” Poe laughed, enamored by Finn’s admiration of the birds. He tugged his arm. “You wanna play with them, do it later. Comatose Jedi, remember?”

Finn gave an exaggerated wistful sigh, but let Poe tug him back toward the hut.

“Yeah, I remember. I don't know that we'll be much help, though. Do you think Snoke did something to him?” he asked as they picked their way over the rocky path to Luke's hut. 

Poe slipped a little in the wet grass, but caught himself. “Maybe. But based on what Rey said, maybe he just...tired himself out?” 

The inside of the hut, this time, smelled like old person, which was not a smell either of them normally associated with the Jedi Master. It was also rather cool, so Poe lit a few more candles, and then thought better of it, wondering how scarce they were here. Looking around, he found a stove. “Okay, buddy. I’m gonna get a little more heat in here. Tell me what you need from me.”

Finn frowned, then shrugged and settled on the ground next to Luke.  _ Come on, give me something. Point me in a general direction, _ he thought, hopefully, as he turned to look for the medkit they'd brought with them.

The medkit contained, among its contents, a little diagnostic device about the same size as a flimsi pad. He turned it on and used it to scan Luke the way Kalonia had taught him during a training for field medics, hoping it would come up with something.

“Well, he's perfectly healthy, except for some arthritis,” Finn sighed when the device beeped at him. “There's nothing physically wrong with him, which is great on the one hand, but isn't especially helpful…”

He tucked the device away and just stared at Luke for a minute, willing him to do something that would help them figure out what was wrong. After two minutes, he looked up to Poe and blinked.

“I don't know. He's breathing normally and evenly, any there's nothing else wrong as far as the medi-device can tell.” He frowned again, still stumped. “And he's giving me a headache.”

Poe laughed until he saw Finn grab the bridge of his nose. “Ah, wait what? You’re serious?” 

He grabbed Finn by the elbow and ushered him back out of the hut, where it was now raining pretty heavily. “Seriously, buddy? That’s what’s wrong with him? He’s just sleeping and gives Force Sensitive people headaches?” 

“Well, I guess...but why is he giving Force Sensitive people headaches? Why'd he make Rey so much worse?” Finn asked. 

He pulled Poe back into the other hut, where at least it was dry. “He's obviously doing something to or with the Force, or it's doing something to him that anyone else who senses the Force can feel.”

Rey and Wedge looked at them as they stood dripping in the doorway.

“He’s fine, though. Like, there’s nothing medically wrong with him,” Poe added, shaking himself off. 

Wedge glared and handed him a towel. 

“What would give a Force Sensitive person a headache and knock out a Jedi?” Finn asked Rey. 

She shrugged, and wished, not for the first time, that she could ask Master Luke. 

“Maybe…being in a void where there  _ is _ no Force?” she finally ventured. 

When everyone gave her a “where did that come from” look of confusion, she added, “Kind of like if you get near an ysalamir? Little lizards, kind of fuzzy. They neutralize the Force. Jedi who get too close to them get headaches, exhaustion, disorientation...it's because there's sort of a void in the Force around them.”

“So Luke is turning into a were-ysalamir?” Poe suggested, and Finn thumped him in the chest. “Okay, okay. So some Force nullification thing. Is  _ he  _ doing it? Or is it being done  _ to  _ him? What exactly happened on the  _ Supremacy _ ?” 

Rey frowned at Poe, and her eyes shot worriedly to Wedge. 

“He—Luke saved me,” she admitted, feeling guilty. “I’m not sure how. He sent a ghost of himself to the  _ Supremacy _ , and fought Ren and Snoke. I escaped. I didn’t see how it ended.”

“Like a Force ghost, but without the whole glowing blue thing?” Finn asked, and Rey nodded.

“Yeah, he looked just like himself. Mostly. Maybe a tiny bit younger,” she said, briefly amused that he'd gone to the trouble of giving his Force projection self a makeover. “He looked like he'd shaved and cut his hair, it was...weird.”

Wedge made a soft huffing nose, chuckling at Luke's apparent vanity.

“I didn't know that was even possible. Projecting himself, I mean, not him shaving. Though, really, that's almost as shocking,” Wedge said, and Rey shrugged one shoulder.

“I didn't know it was either. It must have taken an enormous amount of power to keep that illusion for even a short time, and realistically enough to fool Snoke and Ren,” she responded. 

Finn shot her a thoughtful look, and she raised her eyebrows at him.

“What if he burned himself out? Like the time you threw the AT-AT, remember?” he asked.

“Maybe. But that doesn't explain why he's giving Force Sensitives headaches.” Rey sighed and fell silent. In her lap, Sam warbled softly before reaching for another stone off the ground. This, he offered her with a still-partially-toothless grin, and received a hug in return—probably what he'd been angling for in the first place.

Even Wedge smiled. “That’s a pretty cute kid. As kids go.” 

Poe smirked at him, and then frowned. “Okay, but it’s not, like, Snoke doing something to Luke, is it?” 

“If anything, this seems like protection from Snoke,” Rey said slowly. “Or people like him. He knew Wedge was here with him, so he didn’t have to worry about hurting him…” 

“I thought you said the force was communica—”

“Ah…! Ahem!” Poe interrupted, drawing Wedge inexorably outside. “Hey, what’s for dinner around here? Do we shoot the birds or you want to go down to see what we got in the  _ Falcon _ ?...”


	15. Chapter 15

They decided to stay a few days, to see if Luke would get better on his own, or if there would turn out to be anything they could do for him. Existence was hard on the island, and for once Poe thought fondly of the farm work on Yavin IV—gentleman farm work, for the most part, compared to spear-fishing in the freezing surf on Ahch-To.

“If he’s...just going to be like this,” Poe ventured once to Wedge, while they were doing just this, “do you want to come back with us...or…?”

Wedge, true to type, didn’t answer right away. Poe thought he might not answer at all when he said, “Well, I’m not the only one who will care.”

Finn, meanwhile, was trying to cajole Rey out of her sad, listless sort of funk. He wasn't sure what exactly was wrong, and she hadn't told him, but his solution probably would have been there same anyway.

“We need to go outside. I know there's no sun and it's raining half the time, but it's better than going crazy in here,” he told her. She was currently blinking a little sleepily at him.

“Why am I taking so long to heal? I feel like all I've done is sleep, but I'm still tired, and it's _boring_ ,” she said. She was whining, and she knew it, but whatever. She was allowed.

“Probably a lot of reasons? Come on, we'll take Sam to see the little birds,” he said, and went to take Sam from her so she could stand. She stretched, stifled a yawn (Sam echoed it, which made her smile like a dope because his yawns were still _so cute_ ), and took Finn's arm.

“Let's walk in the opposite direction of Luke’s hut,” she suggested. “Where's Poe, by the way? And Chewie?”

“Poe is maybe spear fishing?” Finn said, and shrugged. It wasn't a large island, they'd probably find them if they walked long enough. “Chewie is doing something to the _Falcon_. I didn't really catch the specifics.”

Rey shook her head fondly. He was probably upgrading something again—it seemed to be his way of relieving stress and avoiding boredom without inconveniencing anyone. She made a mental note to check on him later when he was done working, even though he would probably just roll his eyes and grumble at her for unnecessary worrying.

“Well then…should we go fishing?” she asked Finn, and led the way down the hill.

...

“Holy sithspit!” Poe cried, wading through the freezing water and clambering up a boulder in the surf. “You didn't crash land here, did you? Is that a T-65?!”

Wedge laughed. “That thing's been underwater since Luke came here the first time.”

Poe turned around, utterly serious. “I need to fly it.”

“Buddy…”

“What do you need to fly?” Finn called from a short distance away, still carrying Sam in one arm while Rey clung gently to his other one.

“Are you talking about Luke’s old X-Wing?” Rey asked. “He said he sunk it there on purpose, and I’d have to learn how to lift it if I wanted to raise it and fix it.”

There were a limited number of things on this island for Poe to get _that_ excited about; Luke’s X-Wing was the best one. Rey grinned as she wandered over to join the two men at the edge of the surf, though she stayed well away from getting her feet wet.

Poe turned his head so fast his hair flopped in front of his face.

“ _Can_ you raise it?” he asked. “I mean—when you’re better, I don’t mean now, but—it’s a _T-65_ , Rey!”

Rey huffed. “I pulled tons of those out of the sand on Jakku every day—in several pieces.”

Poe made a strangled squeak. “But this one’s mostly whole! And it can’t have been down there _that_ long…”

“Just about as long as I’ve been alive,” Rey said curtly.

Wedge groaned. “Gods, you’re so young. But yes, that thing’s probably beyond hope, Poe.”

Poe would not take no for an answer. “Come _on_. With the three of us working on it? What else better do we have to do?”

“Catch food for you idiots,” Wedge said, spearing a fish decisively.

“I could catch food,” Finn offered, “Since I'm not much use for fixing starships.”

He watched Wedge pull the spear back out of the water with a fish stuck on the end. Wedge looked at him and raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Come on, I can spear a fish. I can hit a target from way farther away than the length of that spear,” Finn reassured him.

“ _So. Young_ ,” Wedge reiterated. He shook the fish back off the spear on dry land before returning to the ankle-deep surf to spear another one.

“Finn!” Poe called from his place on the rock, and tossed him his spear, which he barely caught without dropping the baby.

“Poe!” he scolded, but Poe had already dived underwater to take a look at entombed X-wing.

Except for the barnacles, it looked brand new. No hint of rust, which was odd, but Poe wasn’t going to complain, and chalked it up to Force magic. He’d seen weirder. He came up spluttering.

“Oh my gods you guys I think the canopy is still sealed! That hatch is watertight! We need to get a pulley system and get this out!”

“I can _do_ it,” Rey said, finally. She didn’t look like she could, small and shivering and pale, but she sounded like what prevented her from doing it was not ability.

“Look, it's been in the water this long, I'm sure it can wait one more day or two, right? Just…you still look really tired,” Finn said when Rey turned and scowled at him.

Belatedly, he realized that the best way to get Rey to do something was to tell her she couldn't or shouldn't.

“You could help me. Like the time we looked for Poe?” she said to him. “I'll be fine, Finn, I just...can't do it all by myself at the moment.”

He sighed and went over to stand with her, wrinkling his nose at the sea spray. Sam screeched happily as Finn shifted him to his other arm, apparently of the opposite opinion to his dad.

“Hey, come hold your kid while we do this,” Finn said, grinning as Sam squirmed in his arm and reached out towards Poe.

“Hey, you think you can do it?” Poe asked, clambering down from the rock and running up onto the beach. He was now shivering, too, which Sam thought was hilarious, when he was in Poe’s arms. “Oh, Force, that was really dumb. I just really got so excited about an X-wing that I jumped into freezing cold water. Wow. Be better than your Papa, kid.”

He stood back to watch as Rey took Finn’s hand.

“Mm, no, you better come here, too,” she said, reaching out to Poe.

Wedge kept fishing.

Rey took Poe's hand on one side and Finn's on the other, tugging them close so she could feel their warmth against her sides. Then she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, taking a moment to just feel the Force, watching it flow around and through all of them—but especially around and through her husbands and their son, bright and warm and comfortable.

She gathered it slowly and shaped it with the intent to lift the X-Wing free of the water. It kept slipping and leaking away, which never would have happened if she'd been at her own full strength, but here she drew on Finn to help. Solid, patient, quietly _stubborn_ Finn, who was the stable foundation she needed if she was going to raise an old starfighter from a watery grave.

Having drawn on Finn to bend the Force around the X-Wing, she started tugging it free of the bottom of the cove. It rose slowly and broke the surface of the water unevenly, listing off to the right no matter what she did.

It was going to hit something if it didn't straighten out. She had no idea what to do to bring its right side up, and it wobbled worryingly as she raised it all the way up over the water.

This was really more of a Poe problem. He was so excited he was pure energy. He wanted the ship so badly he was practically a magnet for it, and all she really needed to do was turn want into intent and supply a route for the energy to go to pull the X-Wing in to shore.

When it was safely over dry ground, she may have dropped it several feet, having held onto it longer than she'd thought she would be able to. With the Force no longer so close to her, she was suddenly very tired, and she sagged against the boys as she took deep breaths.

It hadn't been pretty, but she'd done it. Luke's old X-Wing sat dripping on the rocks and boulders that passed for a beach here. Rey turned her head to give Poe a pleased, albeit exhausted, smile.

Poe and Finn caught her, but mostly Finn, as Poe kissed her. “Rey, you did it, darling!”

He whooped and ran over to it, circling it in the sand, no longer seeming to be cold. “This’ll cheer you up! Fixing up an old X-wing!”

Even Wedge looked interested, in spite of himself, and Rey, though she was still leaning heavily on Finn, was smiling proudly. Sam was just excited that everyone else was excited, and BB-8, who had joined them with Chewie and about sixteen porgs in tow, also looked thrilled.

“I’m sure it will, but first I’m going to need to sleep,” Rey said, still grinning, but she still felt winded, almost like she’d run all the way down here with a heavy pack rather than walked down at a sedate pace with Finn’s arm to balance on if she needed it.

She was really tired of being so easily _tired_.

“You should bring a tarp down to protect it, now that it’s out of the water,” she suggested, eyeing the porgs that had followed Chewie and BB-8. She didn’t really want them nesting all over the old x-wing now that she’d gone to the effort of pulling it out of the water.

“I’ll help you check the weather-sealing on it before we go back up,” Wedge offered, walking up to rest his hand on the underside of the starship. It was oddly like seeing an old friend, though it was possible he was just being sentimental because Luke wasn’t here to be sentimental for the both of them. Finally he revealed, “Son of a bitch just took off in this thing without telling any of us.”

He sounded more mad than hurt, so Poe ventured a laugh, clapping him on the back. “Well, look on the bright side. He can’t go anywhere now.”

“Unless he dies.”

“He’s not gonna die!” Poe and Finn exclaimed in the same instant, and Chewie yowled agreement.

“Come _on_ , you’ve been alone too long, Admiral,” Poe laughed. “Luke’s going to be fine. He’s Luke Skywalker! You can’t keep a good Jedi down. Right, Rey?”

“Right,” Rey said, sitting heavily in the sand.

“Except when a good Jedi is really tired. But that's temporary,” Finn said sympathetically as he sat down next to Rey. She nodded and burrowed against his side, and when he tipped her head back so she would look up at him, she grinned.

“You're warm,” she told him, so he took pity and put his arm over her shoulder.

“Here, we'll take Sam, you guys do your pilot thing,” Finn said, and he presently found himself with a lap full of excited baby. Sam couldn't decide whether to screech at Poe and Wedge or grab for Rey's hair, and once he realized he was on the same level now as the porgs, he kept trying to crawl out of Finn's lap to get to them.

The porgs were equally interested in Finn and the baby.

“They seem to like you,” Rey said, as Poe and Wedge debated their plan of refurbishing. “The porgs I mean. I’m not sure they wouldn’t eat Sam if given the chance though, so—”

Finn’s eyes flashed, and Rey laughed. “I’m joking.”

“What do they even eat, anyway?” Finn asked as one porg, either younger or stupider than the others, hopped close enough that he could have touched it without even having to stretch.

“Fish, I think, though I'm not sure how. They don't look like they could catch anything with those little mouths,” Rey replied.

Finn and the littlest porg were now eyeing each other.

“You're a weird-looking thing,” Finn informed it, and it cooed and flapped its wings as if in agreement, which made him laugh. Sam screeched in delight at the noise it made, though, and it half-flew, half-ran to rejoin its flock.

Sam began to cry at the absence of his new friend, and Rey drew him back against Finn, trying to comfort him, but he kept wriggling and soon Finn let him go to crawl determinedly over to the flock.

Their first flight startled him, however, and he crawled crying back.

“Come on, son, those birds are boring,” Poe said, scooping the baby up with handfuls of dirt. “Whoa boy, you're getting heavy, kiddo. You sure you haven't got sand in your diaper? Come on, let's teach you all about your first antique.”

“Hey!” Wedge complained.

“I was talking about the ship, not you,” Poe teased, pointing out parts of the engine and making Sam repeat clumsy baby-speak versions of them.

Wedge wandered over to Rey and Finn and stood to watch as Chewie and BB-8 joined Poe and started adding their own translations of engine parts for Sam’s benefit.

“If you're not careful, you're going to end up outnumbered by pilots,” he said to Finn, but he was smiling.

“Here's to hoping my flying skills aren't genetic,” Finn responded.

Rey cackled.


	16. Chapter 16

After some time, Wedge left to start cleaning his catch. Finn and Rey eventually sent Poe away with Sam—Sam to get a diaper change and Poe to change his clothes so he wouldn’t freeze to death. 

The sky was darkening, and when the smell of smoke and cooking food began wafting over them, Finn thought he was imagining things. 

“Oh,” Rey said, sitting up from where she leaned against Finn. “The caretakers are having another party. They do that a lot. For nuns.” 

Chewie roared in interest, and BB-8 wiggled. 

[Can we go? I love parties!]

“[We’ll go,]” Chewie growled firmly, fastening the tarp over the X-wing and packing up the tools to return to the Falcon. He stopped as he ambled past the two of them, still sitting on the beach. “[You coming?]”

Rey looked up at Chewie and smiled tiredly. But she enjoyed the raucous gatherings on the beach, and Finn and Poe should definitely experience one at least once.

“Yeah, Chewie. Help me up!” she said, reaching up with both hands. Chewie rumbled softly at her, reached down to take both of her hands in one of his, and pulled her to her feet. Before Finn could say anything, he also reached down to grab Finn’s collar and set him on his feet.

“Ready for a wild party?” Rey asked after she'd taken Finn's arm.

“You're about to fall down,” he told her.

“Yeah, but you'll catch me. Let's go.”

She leaned up to kiss his cheek.

“Whoa, hey, where are we going?” Poe asked, exiting the  _ Falcon  _ with Sam on his shoulders, both of them newly dressed in soft-looking sweaters. “What’s with the fire over—”

“The caretakers have parties on feast days,” Rey explained, tiredly. 

“Oh! Great, I love parties. Are we supposed to bring anything?” 

Rey just laughed. 

…

In the end they had nothing much  _ to _ take with them, but it seemed nothing was expected anyway. In fact, the caretakers seemed to simultaneously ignore and welcome their arrival. They made space for the group, even though Finn was relatively certain that four humans, a Wookiee, a ball droid, and a retinue of porgs were not the usual party guests.

They were shuffled along toward the warm bonfire along with everyone else, and it was here that they found the  _ real _ party.

The Caretakers were very enthusiastic dancers, and they were happy to grab anyone who wasn't already moving to join them. No protest of “I can't” was tolerated, except in Rey's case because she truly looked like she couldn't hardly sit upright, much less dance.

Everyone else, though, was fair game.

The thing was, there wasn’t music in the strictest sense, which was throwing Poe off. There were drums and some kind of chanting without a melody he could follow, and dancing without music was just weird. 

Finn, hangup-less as ever, seemed to have no trouble finding a rhythm to bob his head and shake his hips to, but Poe was pretty hopeless. 

After awhile of watching his husband try and fail to find something to dance to, Finn took pity on him and caught him up in his arms.

“Dance with me!” he laughed, and proceeded to whirl Poe around in time with a rhythm of his own invention. It was mostly an excuse to spin in circles, though he was careful not to collide with anyone while doing so. 

“How do you do it?” Poe asked, and kissed him. “You’re a marvel.” 

He whirled them around the fire to the far side and then back to Rey, and he paused there so he and Poe could both catch their breaths. Rey was still sitting on the ground, though now Chewie had joined her. She was leaning against his side and he had an arm over her shoulders to keep her warm. Sam, who was crawling around after the porgs under BB-8’s supervision, screeched when he saw his dad and papa and held his arms up to be scooped off the ground.

Finn was only too happy to oblige, and he even did a little spin just to make Sammy giggle happily.

“Who would have thought the caretakers knew how to throw such a great party?” he asked the others, beaming and still slightly out of breath.

“Still not sure this is a...” Poe began, but a glare from Finn had him correcting his statement: “No, you’re right. This is a great party. Isn’t it, sweetheart?” 

He dropped to his knees in front of Rey, reaching out to cup her cheek, just under the wicked scar, still new and pink. “You know, if he’d taken your eye out, you could have got a sick mechno eye. With lasers and things. So that when you glared at me, it’d actually do something.” 

Her glare turned into a grin, despite herself. “I don’t need a mechno-eye to do something to you just by glaring at you.” 

Poe leaned in and kissed her. “I know. Dance with me?”  

Rey unfolded herself and took Poe's hands. She brushed kisses across his knuckles and smiled.

“But no spinning today. Otherwise I'll throw up on you,” she warned him, which made Finn laugh.

“Sam and I will make sure he takes it easy,” he promised as he swayed softly with their son in his arms.

Poe pulled her close, cheek to cheek, one arm around the small of her back. 

“You’re starting to worry me, sweetheart,” he murmured after a moment. He didn’t like being the dad-spouse, but sometimes it was his duty, however painful. “I don’t know what’s got you so down. Luke’s gonna be fine, eventually, you know he will. And you’re gonna be okay. So what’s up?” 

Rey sighed deeply, shifting to bury her face under Poe’s chin like she could hide there, even though she wasn’t that much shorter than him. “I don’t...know. It’s not just Luke.”

Poe waited. 

“It’s Luke, yes, but it’s also wanting to get pregnant and I can’t,” she began haltingly. “It’s nightmares and—and feeling for the first time how powerful the Dark side really is. And maybe really being the last Jedi.” 

Poe patted her back, and kissed the scar running along her forehead. “I thought you always said you’re not a Jedi? Not  _ really _ .” 

Rey shrugged, willing Poe's gentle swaying to soothe away her anxieties. It wasn't really working, since she hadn’t told them about the nightmares, or about how close her encounters with Kylo Ren were, but this was leagues better than having no comfort at all. Finn and Sam joined them, Finn wrapping his arm around Rey as Sam snuggled up between his and Poe's shoulders.

“But it doesn't matter what I say, does it? It's what everyone thinks, and everyone thinks I'm the last Jedi,” she said. Finn rested his hand at the back of her neck and kissed her temple. She sighed and pressed back against his hand, like a cat. “Except Snoke and Kylo Ren. They think I’m—”

She was desperately ashamed of the tears that sprang to her eyes and tightened her throat as she added, “nothing. Nobody.” 

“Hey, hey, sweetheart,” Poe said, stopping and grabbing her shoulders. “You’re  _ not  _ nobody. You’re the best. And you’re married to the best.”

“And also the most humble,” Finn teased gently, but it hurt his heart to see Rey like this, and if their only crime had been making the woman he loved feel like nothing and nobody, Finn thought he still would have hounded Snoke and Ren to the ends of the galaxy for it.

“Rey, what they think is worth less than nothing. Sweetheart, hey—it's alright,” Finn added as Rey scrubbed angrily at the tears that ran down her cheeks. 

She was frustrated, she felt weak and tired and  _ useless _ , and she should be  _ better _ than this. She owed it to Luke and Leia and Kes and everyone who was depending on her to be better than this.

Finn shot Poe a  _ what do we do _ look as he felt Rey winding up, like an elastic band pulling to a breaking point.

“Love, you're everything we need, alright? The galaxy doesn't need  _ more _ from you, it just needs you,” Poe said. “And you have us, as much as  _ you  _ need.” 

Sam reached over and grabbed gently at her hair, as if reminding her that she had him, too. “Mama!”

“I just want—” she began, and looked past them to see another face in the firelight, and though she only saw it for an instant, she knew it wasn't Wedge, and it wasn't Luke. 

It was Kylo Ren. 

“I have to—I just need a minute,” she said, pushing away from both of them and stalking into the darkness after the retreating phantom.

Finn and Poe stood, shocked, and staring at each other, but they let her go. 

“Hey!” she yelled, glad the noise of the party was enough to keep anyone from hearing her. She would have looked like she was shouting at thin air.

“Are you here to gloat?” she demanded. 

Kylo Ren said nothing, turning away from her.

“Turn around and answer me, you coward!” she added when she found herself speaking only to his back. 

“I’m not exactly thrilled to be talking to you, either,” Ren said, his voice low and pouting. “If I had anything to gloat about, you wouldn’t be here to gloat  _ to _ .”

“I can't believe I was willing to give you a  _ chance _ . I wanted to help you, and  _ this _ is what I get? A scar on my face, and waking nightmares where I have to see your face pouting at me because he couldn't kill me?” Rey replied, pitching her voice to match his—but with less pouting. She couldn't believe he was actually  _ pouting _ at her. A fully-grown man!

“I mean—” he began, but then he was gone, his form disappearing in between a blink. 


	17. Chapter 17

Being cold didn't usually wake Finn up. If anything, it just meant he curled closer to Rey, Poe, or both, and fell right back to sleep. When Rey couldn't sleep, however, she often got up and went elsewhere—maybe to think, or maybe to be alone—or maybe she was worried her worrying would wake them—and then Finn would wake up cold and realize it was because Rey wasn't there.

Sometimes he would just wrap the blankets closer to himself and burrow against Poe, not wanting to pry, but when it had happened multiple nights in a row, he worried. And then _he_ couldn't get back to sleep, which meant going to go find Rey.

Tonight was the third night in a row Rey had slept restlessly for half the night before giving up and getting out of bed. When Finn woke up to find her spot empty but still warm, he tried to extricate himself from Poe's arms to go find her. If nothing else, she would at least have company.

“I'll be right back,” he whispered to Poe as he maneuvered his way out of bed, earning a sleepy grumble in the process.

“I don’t hear crying. Sammy okay?” Poe murmured. He was shoved against the wall, spooning Finn, while Finn— “Where’s Rey?”

Poe sat up on one elbow and rubbed his face. “She gone again?”

Finn bit off a yawn and stood to find a shirt and pants to pull on, in case Rey had wandered out to stargaze.

“Yeah. Gonna go find her, make sure she's alright,” he answered, “Or—relatively, at least.”

She probably wouldn't be awake at such an hour if everything was completely alright, but at least he could make sure she hadn't been mobbed by porgs, or something.

“You want me to go with?” Poe flopped back down on the bed, trying to gauge Finn’s reaction. Someone should probably stay with the kid, after all, even if BB-8 was here. And he loved Rey, and he loved Finn, but the bed was warm...

“If you want to. I dunno where she went,” he answered. Sometimes he could feel her through the Force, and he paused as he tried to do so now.

“Maybe outside. Feels like outside, I think,” he said, because all he could feel in the Force felt distant from the _Falcon_.

Poe groaned and sat up, rubbing his face. This island was too damn cold, so he was basically fully dressed, needing only to shove his feet into his boots. He checked in briefly with Bee, asking him to keep an eye on Sam for them, and turned to Finn. “Okay. Let’s go find her.”

Finn led the way, skipping a search of the ship and heading straight down the ramp and outside. For an island in the middle of an ocean, it wasn't very quiet at night. The porgs slept only part of the night and chattered quietly at each other for the rest of it, and every so often the large creatures that inhabited the rocky shore would call to each other, their wailing and barking carrying across the whole tiny island. Not to mention the background sounds of ocean that never went away.

It was a miracle they could all sleep at all, with all the racket.

“This way,” Finn said to Poe as he began to skirt around the steepest part of the hill they usually climbed to get to the stone huts.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Poe complained, rubbing his eyes with a full fist. “I said I would go out and look for her, not go out and climb a mountain. Didn’t even tie my boots...”

“We're not climbing the mountain, we're going around it. Sort of,” Finn said as he started walking up the path. “We have to go up before we go around, but not for very long. She hasn't gone to see Luke.”

Poe caught up to Finn, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. “Hey, okay, but—buddy, how do you _know_ ? You seem to _know_ a lot more than usual, is all.”

Poe grinned as he continued, “You developing Force powers we don’t know about?”

But Finn shook his head.

“I can tell where she's gone sometimes. It's the same as when she's upset or really excited or scared, and we can feel something's different—just with a direction,” he tried to explain. Right now there was only a general feeling of disquiet somewhere around the other side of the island. He wondered if it was nightmares that had woken her up, instead of just insomnia.

“...Through the Force,” Poe supplied, confirming his original suspicion, and regarded Finn carefully, like he didn’t quite believe this vague explanation, and liked his own much better.

Especially since Finn seemed to be leading them somewhere, with a purpose. He had a small light to guide their feet, but seemed to know where he wanted to go. Which begged the question why Poe had to come at all. Obviously, he wanted Rey in bed with them, but he knew how it was not being able to sleep. Sometimes you just needed a walk.

Even though it had been happening almost every night since the _Supremacy…_

Finn shrugged.

“I guess it's through the Force. It has to be, right? But Maz and Luke said I had to be at least a little Force sensitive, and we already know it's communicable. I'm probably more susceptible,” he said.

Poe laughed loudly before sobering. “Oh, okay, you said that with a straight face.”

Finn looked over at Poe, trying to read his facial expressions in the dark but unable to do so.

“And part of it is Rey, because I can't do the same thing with you. I get...an impression of you, when you're close. But it's not directional,” he told him. He didn't think he could have even attempted to follow Poe like they were currently following Rey, with his feet almost carrying him forward of their own accord.

“Ah, well that's...cool,” Poe said, and then turned himself around, stamping his feet in the cold impatiently.

“Rey?” he called, then a little louder, deciding they were far enough from the Falcon to not wake Chewie or the baby, “Rey!”

Finn frowned in confusion when there was no answer. They were close enough she should be able to hear them, certainly.

“I don't understand,” he said, frustrated. “Rey! Come on, it's cold!”

She was maybe thirty feet away, just around a bend in the path, and she was apparently going to make them come to her. She didn't feel injured, as far as he could tell, just—off, somehow.

“Rey? We were worried, you weren't—Rey?” he said as they came around the bend. Then he paused in confusion.

“I take it back, my tracking is _not_ reliable,” he admitted to Poe.

Rey was not here. A deep hole with roots growing out of it was here, but Rey was not. The disquiet he'd sensed in the Force was _this_ thing, not Rey, which probably explained why he'd thought Rey felt weird.

“Ha!” Poe chuckled, glad to not be the only mundane one in this relationship. “Wait, seriously? You thought this creepy sinkhole was Rey? What even is it? Is this seaweed?”

Poe crept gingerly toward it, careful not to slip.

“Look, I never claimed to be competent in the Force, just sensitive to it…” Finn muttered, going after Poe.

“It looks like a tree got confused and grew upside down,” Finn decided. He was considering it he should reach out and touch the thing or not. It looked slimy, which was probably a mark in favor of Poe's seaweed idea, but who had ever heard of black seaweed?

“Whatever it is, I think it hates everything, and it's gross. Maybe we should go back…” he suggested as he reached forward to pluck at Poe's sleeve. “Seriously, don't go sticking your head in there. There's nothing right about this.”

“Fine. Hole gives me the creeps, too,” Poe said, standing up and backing away. He shot Finn a leering grin. “And I normally like holes.”

Finn got about halfway through rolling his eyes before he turned his back to keep looking for Rey, and that was apparently precisely the wrong thing to do.

Poe didn’t actually realize what had happened until it was all over, but the way he put it together was that when it looked like Finn slipped in the seaweed, what actually happened was it wrapped around his ankle and grabbed him, yanking him to the center of the crevice so fast Poe quickly realized this meant trouble.

Of course, his reaction to Finn going over the edge and down was to give a shout and slide feet-first immediately after him.

Finn found himself falling, and before he could recover from the shock of that, he landed with a splash in very cold water. His breath caught immediately, which was probably good, but the disorientation of falling and landing in water stunned him for a moment and the water closed over his head.

He flailed with his arms and legs as something—Poe, he assumed, or perhaps hoped—splashed in next to him and came up shivering to flounder for dry land.

Finn grabbed for whatever part of Poe he could reach to pull him upright and point them both at the shore.

Before, he'd merely been cold. Now, as he crawled out of the water, he was definitely freezing. This had not been in the plan for going to find Rey, and unless she was hiding, she wasn't down here at all.

Poe sputtered and coughed, glad for Finn's support as they staggered onto dry land to assess where they were.

“What the hell was that?!” Poe demanded.

“Evil seaweed? Seaweed that's gone to the Dark Side?” Finn asked Poe, raising his head to nod at the tangled black curtain hanging down within the hole.

Whatever it was, there was nothing light about it. He looked back at Poe, instead.

“Are you alright?”

“Are _you_ okay?” Poe replied, coughing up the last bit of water and shaking his hair to dry it. “That thing grabbed you! Are we sure it's not some sort of—that it's not alive?”

He looked with apprehension up at the hole, and, remembering he could, activated the small pen light in his mechno arm—since Finn had dropped his.

“I'm not really sure how we'd tell…” Finn answered. He stared up at the seaweed thing as if waiting for it to move, but it was completely still. He would have thought he had hallucinated being grabbed, except Poe had seen it too.

“It didn't grab you, though. Nice moves, by the way, whatever you did was probably very daring,” he teased, “Even if now we're both stuck down here with no help.”

Poe laughed, not sure if Finn was making fun of him or not.

He was glad Poe had come after him, though. It would have been even creepier down here all alone, and there was a better chance of them both climbing out together than one of them managing it alone. He leaned closer to Poe and pressed a quick kiss against his lips in silent gratitude before nodding over his shoulder in the opposite direction of the water.

“Let's see if there's another way out,” he suggested.

“I mean, if we don’t mind swimming, there’s probably a way out this way,” Poe said, peering into the water where he was sure he could detect waves. “The mouth of the cave is this way. Or else…”

Poe swung his flashlight behind them, further into the cave, and was surprised to see it end rather abruptly in a reflective surface. He strode immediately up to it. “Well, that’s neat!”

“What is it?” Finn asked. It looked like a giant mirror, but one that was naturally occurring rather than manufactured. Curiosity piqued, he brought his hand up to tap on it with his knuckles and see if it was rock like everything else, or if it was some strange kind of metal.

“Is it...salt?” Poe wondered, licking it and then spitting. “Salt- _y_. Everything’s salty here.”

Then he peered closer. “Hey, look, it’s doing like a double-reflection. How the hell…?”

Poe glanced behind him and then looked back, and every time he did, it seemed, another image of him appeared superimposed further back and smaller. The same thing was happening with Finn’s reflection too. “What the…”

“Now wait a second, that shouldn’t happen,” Finn said. He stepped up closer to the mirror rock and tapped on it again with his knuckles. The mirror-Finns did too, but each at a slight delay. When he reached over to touch Poe's shoulder, so did the reflections, and when he jostled Poe's shoulder, Poe's reflections stumbled to catch their balance, too.

“What _is_ this?” Finn asked, somewhat rhetorically since, clearly, neither of them could answer the question.

Poe’s brow furrowed as his confusion began to lead to concern. “I don’t...know…”

The line of Finns was changing, Poe was pretty sure, like he got taller and paler the further back he went, and that change was coming forward until Poe yelped to see Finn’s reflection turn into Kylo Ren. “Finn, look out!”

Finn ducked, though he didn't immediately see a reason to. His reflection, of course, ducked after him, and when he straightened they did likewise in a weird, wavelike motion.

All but one. It was a simple thing, one reflection that didn't straighten as smoothly as the others. As soon as he noticed it, it was gone--but as he looked, more closely, he saw shifts, little ones that only seemed to happen when he wasn't focused on a specific reflection.

They seemed like random, innocuous changes. Sometimes his hair was longer, or he had scars or strange clothes. There were reflections still dressed as stormtroopers, some dressed as elite stormtroopers, even one that was dressed in chrome, like what Phasma had worn but darker.

The reflection in front of him, when he finally noticed it, was dressed all in black, a mask over his face, and Finn took a reflexive step back. The reflection did as well, but it also reached up to remove the mask and reveal not Kylo Ren, but Finn’s own face.

Finn's blood ran cold and he slammed his palms against the rock in retaliation for whatever game it was playing.

His reflections disappeared like a switch had been flipped, and he stood there breathing hard before resting his forehead against the rock.

Poe was distracted from the sight of Finn reeling in confusion by a movement out of the corner of his own eye. When he looked, his own body was changing, mechanica glowing red and crawling up his arm until it took over his own body in the reflection, until he was looking at some kind of droid version of himself.

He blinked, and it cleared. Of course Poe believed in the Force, but he was also a rational man. “Okay, this is just weird…”

Finn looked over at Poe, but he could see nothing of Poe's reflection. Instead, he pulled back to watch warily as fingertips, hovering just in the corner of his vision, resolved from the mist to press against his. Two hands almost precisely matching his own rested against the other side of the mirror, and a hazy shape came into clarity behind them as their owner stepped closer. This was not one of his own reflections _or_ a variation thereon. This was someone else entirely, a tall spectre with strong, wiry hands and a sturdy build. She stepped closer still and Finn tipped his head in curiosity and confusion.

“Sam?” the reflection asked, fully visible now, red braided hair wreathing a face marked by a lifetime of tragedy. Finn pressed his forehead back to the glass and closed his eyes.

“Mom?” he asked, but the reflection whirled and disappeared, leaving nothing--not even Finn's reflection, he realized when he opened his eyes.

The reflection shimmered and changed, for Poe, until he was staring Admiral Holdo in the face, and he was pulling a gun on her, staging an actual mutiny, _what the hell—_

Finn was in a First Order hangar, with Rose Tico, about to be executed—but no, _Phasma was dead! Hux was supposed to be dead!_

Finn had shuffled close to Poe, and now he saw what Poe was seeing. The image flicked again, and they were on a planet where old speeders kicked up red dirt, and there were only a couple dozen of them against First Order armored transports. They were getting picked off one by one, trying to shut down a huge gun, and Finn wasn’t stopping, flying straight for it even as Poe and Rose screamed for him to stop.

And then, as though with an almighty push, they were through the stone barrier together, floundering around in snowfall, with that same terrified urgency that Finn recognized on Starkiller, but rocks surrounded them instead of trees.

“Where’s Rey?” Poe asked, though he didn’t understand why that was so urgent. “Where are the girls?”

Finn had Luke’s blue lightsaber in his hand, and Poe a heavy blaster.

The back of his mind wondered, _What girls?_

“You’ve got to get them out of here, Poe,” Finn said, though he didn’t know why he knew to say that, like it was a script they rehearsed.

“I won’t leave you!” Poe cried, and then the source of their fear stepped out of the darkness.

Kylo Ren. A body lay in the snow just behind him, and Finn and Poe screamed at once:

“REY!”

Kylo Ren advanced on them, everything behind him swirling into confusion as even Rey disappeared, and Finn strode forward to meet him.

“You! I know you're behind this. I'll kill you if you've hurt her!” he yelled, the vision colliding with real life.

Ren stumbled to a stop. His lightsaber shut off and he stood as if confused to be here, too. It was like they found themselves on the set of filming a holonovella, rehearsing a scene that wasn’t real, but soon might be.

“Odd. I'm certain I've never seen either of you like this,” Ren said. “You can stop snarling. I can't harm you, you can't harm me. Not that your _charming_ wife and I didn't try.”

An airy image of Rey and Kylo Ren seated before a fire, touching hands, flickered on the wall behind them like some crazy alternate reality, and Poe growled. Finn stamped one foot in frustration.

“What the kriffing _hell_ are you talking about?” he asked.

Kylo Ren laughed.

“Oh, she hasn't told you? That's…interesting,” he said.

Before Finn could either yell at him some more or try to strike him anyway, Ren vanished.

“What are you doing down here?” Rey asked, and Finn and Poe blinked and looked around to find themselves back in the cave. The snow and Kylo Ren were gone.

“Rey!” Finn cried as he turned around, still not sure what they'd just witnessed or why, and he strode to her and wrapped her in a hug.

“We were looking for you,” he answered, loosening his grip but not quite willing to let go. They'd seen her just lying there in the snow, motionless where Kylo Ren had struck her down… “What is this place?”

“Is _that_ what you’ve been seeing?” Poe accused, jabbing his finger at the mirror rock. “Kylo Ren is supposed to kill you? What’s this connection you—”

“There’s no connection,” Rey barked, eyes flashing.

Poe gave her an unconvinced stare: _What is it, then?_

Rey looked past Poe's shoulder at the rock and frowned.

“I'm going to kill Kylo Ren,” she said, which was true, but also wasn't a straight answer to Poe's question. She stepped away from Finn, who frowned. “This cave is the Dark balance to the Force Tree’s Light. We shouldn't be here.”

She could only barely feel the Force Tree here, with the darkness pressing in from all sides. She hated even being near this cave, much less being _in_ it.

“If you hadn’t _wandered off_ ,” Poe began, temper flaring at the lack of a straight answer and the growing indication that she hadn’t been honest with them for a while, “we wouldn’t be here.”

“Poe, there’s not time for this, we need to get away from here—”

“Now I really wish I _could_ watch,” Kylo Ren said, appearing to Rey’s senses, feeling stronger here than she remembered sensing him.

“Rey, just tell us what’s going on!” Poe insisted, refusing to budge.

“Stop it, stop it!” Rey cried, eyes gushing frustrated tears, and the flat mirrored surface of the rock cracked when she looked at it, causing the earth to shake. “Make him go away! We need to leave!”

“Rey, there's no one here! We're the only ones here,” Finn said, though he looked around to reassure himself that Kylo Ren hadn't somehow slunk in while they weren't looking.

“Poe, come on, we'll do this somewhere else. It's cold, and—it's bad, here. The Force is wrong,” he said, because the room continued to rumble ominously. If they didn't leave, either Rey or the dark side of the Force that inhabited this cave were going to bring it down around them. Finn reached for Poe to tug at his arm and drag Rey along as well toward the water, which seemed the most expedient exit.

Rey and Poe both pulled up short.

“No, it’s—” _this way_ , she seemed about to say, but blurted out, “Shut up! Shut up!” instead, covering her ears and running around a corner and scrambling nimbly up over boulders, leaving Poe and Finn to follow her out, until they all stood filthy and shivering in the freezing rain.

Finn sighed in relief as the feeling of wrongness faded to only the edge of his awareness, leaving room for the physical misery of being cold and wet and tired.

But not for Rey, apparently, as she was still standing with her hands over her ears, hunched forward and not looking at either of them.

“Rey, love. We're here,” he said as he wrapped his arms gingerly around her shoulders. When she didn't pull away, he hugged her tight. “And he’s not, you hear me?”

Over the top of her head, he gave Poe a look of concern, not sure what else they could do.

“Okay, let’s...let’s get inside,” Poe said. He was fine with rain, it was the cold rain that was horrible.

Keeping Rey between them, Poe and Finn wound their way back to the _Falcon_ , using Poe’s mechno-light to guide their way. Though no one said anything, they had mostly calmed down by the time they walked inside, completely soaked.

“Okay, okay,” Poe said, in crisis mode. “Everyone strip, and meet me in the galley. I’ll bring clothes and make some tea and we’ll...talk. Also, Rey, can you stop making everything—float...”

Poe trailed off when Rey looked at him in confusion, and he pointed to the datapad and the pair of shoes hovering about a meter off the ground—

Right in front of Sam’s room.

“ _Now_ what—?” Poe wondered, rushing in.

“Sam?” Finn asked in alarm, and Rey managed to get in the door one step ahead of him only because she was closer.

BB-8 gave a startled bleat when they rushed in, looking around and realizing that several toys were also floating.

None of them knew what to say, but the noise of their rushed arrival woke Sam, who gave a timid whimper and then started to cry, sitting up to reach for them as they gathered by his crib.

There was a clatter and an indignant squawk from BB-8 as everything hit the floor—except the toy X-Wing that bounced off BB-8’s dome.

“Wait, that was— _Sam_ was doing that?” Finn asked in confusion. “In his sleep?”

 _He_ couldn't make things float like that. How could his clone?

“Whoa, Sammo, baby,” Poe said, scooping him up and comforting the clearly startled baby, but Sam started crying immediately for his mother.

When Sam reached for her, Rey's already-shaky composure crumbled into a small, hiccuping sob. She snuggled her son close when Poe passed him to her and tried to reassure them both—sometimes the Force was fun, it wasn't always waking nightmares and strange visions and your most hated enemy appearing out of nowhere to harass you. But right now, she didn't want the Force anywhere near Sam, who was only a baby and would more likely than not be afraid of it until he realized he could direct it.

Sam did begin to settle immediately, sensing the Force in Rey, as though sensing there the safe version of it. Somehow it only made Rey feel worse.

Finn, having not expected Rey to start crying, hovered anxiously for a moment before gingerly wrapping his arms around both of them. BB-8 wobbled anxiously at their feet as if concerned that they should have done something about the floating toys.

“What's all this about, my loves? We're all okay, we're all safe and sound,” he said, reaching out to include Poe in their sodden group hug.

[Friend-Rey and Small-friend-Sam are distressed!] BB-8 whistled. [And your body temperatures are all suboptimal! You are very wet!] they added in dismay.

“Right, okay,” Poe said, leaving abruptly to return with blankets and fresh clothes, and a second time with hot tea. They managed dressing and juggling the baby in mostly silence, before Poe huffed. “Okay. Rey? We’re worried about you. _You’re_ worried about you. What’s going on?”

Rey felt fortified by the presence of her boys, all three of them, and BB-8, and even the _Falcon_ and Chewie down the hall snoring. It made her less afraid, and less like the Dark side had power over her, even if it was still _waiting_.

She sighed in resignation. “I don’t know. I’m so mixed up. I _might_ be headed towards the Dark side, or I _might_ be just so worried about it it’s all I can think about.”

“Well, that seems—” _normal_ , Poe was about to say, but apparently Rey was constructing a list:

“—I _might_ be communicating with Kylo Ren, or it _might_ be a hallucination—”

“I’m sorry, what?” Poe blinked.

“ _That's_ what he was talking about. You've been _talking to him_ . Neither of you can touch the other, but you can talk, and you haven't _told_ anyone? Rey—” Finn said, putting it together and feeling some confused mix of angry, concerned, and hurt. “ _Why_ would you try to just handle this all on your own?”

Rey looked up at him and glared over the top of Sam’s head. “Why do you think? Are you going to do anything but worry, now?” she asked him, and then turned to Poe. “Can you do anyting to make him stop appearing to me? Are the two of you going to try to stop me from fighting Kylo Ren even if I have to sacrifice myself to kill him?”

“Um. Obviously?” Poe said, but she didn’t seem to think it was funny. Neither did he.

She hugged Sam, thought of his future sisters, the ones she was sure he would have, and the Force Tree and what Maz had said—but also about a vision of fighting Ren in the snow, of him striking her down and going after her family, and she would do anything to prevent that vision coming to pass.

“Is every single thing we do now going to be in the knowledge that there's a good chance at least one of us doesn't come out of this war alive?” she asked quietly. “I don't want that for you. I know what it's like, and I didn't want you to have to.”

“Hey,” Poe said firmly, catching that this was directed mostly at him, and tried to joke, “Look, I already broke that curse. I fulfilled that trope. We’re done dying, all of us.”

Then he sobered, pulling Rey into his lap on the floor, and Finn close to his side. “And hey, look. We all know this is bigger than us. Sometimes that means some scary shit. Sometimes that means...not everyone makes it. But we can’t be scared all the time that it might happen. If we’re so scared we won’t make it, what’s the point of living through the parts we do?”

Rey sighed, shifting until she could snuggle close to Poe's chest, Sam a warm and comfortable weight against her as he quieted and realized he was still sleepy.

“I know. But—if I have to sacrifice myself to protect all of this, so you can have this even without me... I'm not saying you have to like it, but _please_ don't hate me for it. It's not like I want that, but I keep getting these hints that—” she sighed, not wanting to say it out loud for fear of giving it power, “—that it might come to that.”

“Look,” Poe said, firmly, because Rey wasn't listening. “The opposite of being scared of it doesn't mean chasing after it. You're the most powerful Jedi we've got and frankly if you die the galaxy's got bigger problems. Okay? So stop obsessing over this.”

Poe jogged her where his arm wrapped around her, making Sam fuss. “This is what comes of phenomenal cosmic powers.” He paused. “And now I sound like my dad.”

“Oh, the horror,” Finn said dryly.

This at least got a small, if watery, smile from Rey.

“He's right, though, sweetheart. And you may be an all-powerful Jedi, but you're also still Rey Dameron, and you're only human, and even Damerons make mistakes. Your interpretations of your visions might not be right, you know,” he told her. “It's a vision, not predestiny. Even Luke has had wrong ones.”

Rey frowned at him.

“How would you know?” she asked, and he grinned.

“Wouldn't you like to know?” he asked.

“Finn, you do know _Luke Skywalker Adventures_ isn't actually a documentary...right?” Rey laughed.

He stuck his tongue out at her. “Maybe you should ask him anyway when he wakes up,” he suggested.

“But he's definitely admitted to being wrong about things,” Poe agreed. “That's the problem with godlike powers. It freaks you out into thinking you've got all the answers, or that you need to.”

Finn leaned in for a hug, and Poe rubbed his back and said, “We just need you to be Rey.”

There was a pause. “And next time you see Kylo Ren, just tell me where to punch.”

Rey laughed a little at that. For several minutes, they sat in comfortable silence, snuggling there in a pile on the floor before Finn remembered why they'd originally rushed in here.

“So I guess putting things out of Sam's reach won't be enough to stop him getting them,” he observed softly.

The baby in question had fallen back to sleep with his arms tucked to his chest and his face half buried against Rey, and Finn didn't want to wake him unnecessarily.

“Guess so.” Rey whispered, watching him sleep.

“So what did _you_ see in that cave?” Poe finally ventured.

Rey shrugged. “An endless line of me’s where I thought I’d see my parents. Me replacing Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren killing me.”

She tucked Sam into his crib and turned around. “What did you see?”

Poe waved a hand. “Banthashit. Nothing. Maybe—maybe something like your vision. It’s stupid. I believe in the Force, but it’s not showing me my destiny in some dank cave somewhere.”

“I saw an endless line of different versions of me, and the last one was Kylo Ren,” Finn said. “Also actual Kylo Ren, toward the end before you found us. Even had a conversation with him. And I saw...my mom! But otherwise, all the same shit as Poe.”

“Your mom?” Poe said in a sad kind of surprise, and squeezed Finn’s shoulder. At least the creepy Force mirror hadn’t taunted _him_ with images of his dead mother. Small miracles.

“Yeah. She has hands a lot like mine,” he said with a crooked smile. “And her hair is red, and she has laugh lines kind of like your dad. But she looked—sad.”

Then he put one arm around each of his spouses’ waists and leaned to kiss first Rey's cheek, then Poe's. “Let's never go near the evil seaweed hole again, though, huh?” he asked them.

“Yep.”

“Sounds great.”


	18. Chapter 18

All of them, even little Sam, slept until late the next morning—though as soon as he was awake, so was everyone else. He was fussy, whining when they held him and crying when they set him down, and Rey was equal parts exhausted and restless.

Rey’s restlessness drove them eventually up the hill to see Wedge and check on Luke.

“He hasn't so much as moved,” Wedge told them, knocking—habit? Wishful thinking that there'd be an answer?—before pushing the door open.

“Still sleeping, old friend?” he asked, voice gentle, as he went to join Luke.

He rearranged the blanket and touched Luke's shoulder before looking back toward them and giving them a small, tired smile.

“I thought you don’t like being in here, Rey,” Poe said, hoisting Sam up on one hip. “He’s gonna get fussy, too, and Finn—you okay, buddy?”

Rey was staring determinedly at Luke. “I have to do this. I’m going to heal him.”

There was a pause.

“Ah. Really?” Poe sounded a little skeptical. “I mean I thought that was a...like a one-time thing? Or that you had to be under a lot of—stress or—”

Rey turned around fully to glare at him.

“—Which of course you absolutely are. Under a lot of stress, I mean. Have been for a while, right. You’re just very good at hiding it, honey,” he corrected quickly, and gave her a goofy smile.

“I have to help him. I need _his_ help, and there's nothing wrong with him, he just needs to wake up. I'll bring him back,” Rey said, as if it was perfectly straightforward.

She looked at Sam, who was starting to fuss, and smiled softly. She was about to speak when Wedge cleared his throat and stood.

“I'm afraid I won't be much help—what if I take young Sam back to the other hut, and we wait for you there?” he offered a little awkwardly.

Rey shook her head. “I need you here, too. Luke needs you here. It shouldn’t take long.”

“Oh. Okay, sure, if it'll help,” Wedge said, and seemed relieved to sit back down and take one of Luke's hands. Sam continued fussing, but seemed for the moment to be content with this small expression of his displeasure.

He did reach for Rey, though. “Mama hewp,” he said, the “help” coming out a little round and uncertain.

He opened and closed fist and mechno-arm (the soft green one, by his own choice some days ago) to reinforce his words, and Rey took him, settling him in her lap so he could watch without having to be held.

“Sweet Sam. But you have to let Mom and Daddy and Papa concentrate, okay?” Rey asked him, and he patted her knees.

“Oh, me, too?” Poe said, a little jokingly to cover up his nervousness.

There was a soft growl outside, and they looked out to see Chewie gathered with the nuns, who were all holding hands.

“Looks like you have an audience,” Poe said.

“Or some more help,” Finn added.

They both turned to her, waiting.

Rey looked at all of them, touched and just a little nervous to have such an audience.

“No pressure or anything,” she joked, and then took a deep breath. Sam wiggled himself to a more comfortable position leaning back against her belly, and then went so still he could have been sleeping, if his eyes weren't wide open and watching everything with an uncertain and concerned gaze. He curled his chubby little fingers into her pants leg.

She closed her eyes and blocked everything out but her own breathing, and once she had settled, she let awareness of the others drift back, one by one. Sam was easiest, nestled warm and soft against her, a presence as bright and steady as his father, if smaller and less sure. Finn and Poe were next, almost as familiar as her own sense of herself in the Force. Chewie was an old soul, which she found didn't surprise her at all—she recognized his presence in the Force as soon as she became aware of it, wry and good-humored, but concealing a sort of deep, still wisdom, borne, probably, of years spent around reckless, impatient young humans. Wedge was the most difficult, other than Luke. He kept himself to himself, though the feeling wasn’t necessarily unfriendly. She realized that maybe what she'd assumed to be aloofness when she'd first met him was probably shyness poorly expressed.

And then there was Luke. Her mentor should have been a bright blazing beacon of light amongst all of these non-Force-Users, brighter than Finn or Sam, who shone with the sort of light she was coming to associate with her sense of the Force. But he was muted, as if standing behind an opaque curtain. He was there, when she looked for him, the ghost of a Force shimmer surrounding him, but he was easy to miss. It was like the Force was shunting her attention away from him, causing it to slide off to the side, to ignore him, to pay attention to something else. Usually she had very little trouble focusing on Luke when she had reached this state, but every time she tried to focus on him, it was like she was being actively redirected. She found herself pondering her own presence for a full thirty seconds before a thread of curiosity from Finn and Poe and a discontented whimper from Sam drew her back to her task.

This time she focused hard, her attention skidding and sliding off sideways like a speeder on ice, but she insisted. She was going to heal Luke. She was going to pull this curtain away from him and free him to rejoin them, to fuss at Wedge and teach her what she needed to know.

She gathered the Force to her almost absently, a little bit from everyone. She took their strengths and wove them together with her own intent and her earnest wish that Luke, her friend and her substitute father, would stop sleeping and rejoin them. She bombarded the obscuring curtain surrounding him with all of it, bending it slowly to her will.

As she felt it warp, she exulted, finding a strength she hadn't anticipated and throwing all of that behind her healing as well, feeding every ounce of what she had back into her attempt to heal Luke.

It was _working_. The world was growing brighter, clearer than it had been since she'd been held by the First Order and Kylo Ren, and she was certain that it was her presence in the Force calling to Luke's, anchoring him and pulling him back until he could see that everyone else was here too, helping her.

She borrowed from Poe, and from Finn and the nuns and Chewie, and even from Wedge, aware that she had thrown herself into this without any backup plan. She _willed_ the Force to work, and when she'd exhausted herself acting first as a source and then as a conduit to direct the Force energy of the others, she gasped and wrenched herself away.

“Whoa!” she heard distantly, from Poe, and Finn cried “Rey!”

The world whirled dizzyingly as physical reality reasserted itself and she opened her eyes enough to see Poe pick up a wailing Sam while Finn gathered her into his arms and held her, trying to ask her questions.

Poe and Finn looked at each other briefly. Poe wondered, “Is she okay?”

Rey shook her head and pushed off of him to sit up on her own.

“Rey? Are you alright?” Finn asked, genuinely alarmed.

She drew her focus back to those around her. Wedge had not moved, but Finn was holding her hands, and Poe had passed Sam off to Chewie, who gave a mournful rumble as he comforted the screaming baby and stepped out away from the hut.

“It worked, right?” Rey asked, breathless, but the silence that greeted her told her everything.

“No, it—it worked! I felt it working!” she insisted, and reached out to give Luke's shoulder a soft nudge. “Luke, you're fine. You can wake up,” she told him nonsensically.

“No, no, babe,” Poe said, kneeling on her other side. “He’s—he’s not…”

“Gods, he’s _not breathing_!” Wedge exclaimed.

Poe leapt to action, grabbing a medpak and a Freitak life-support system, while Finn threw his arms around Rey, trying to push her toward the exit.

“NO!” Rey snarled, shoving Finn _hard_ and nearly knocking them both down when he wouldn't let go.

“No, he has to be fine! He can't get _worse_ ,” she tried to explain, but he _was_ worse. He was _dying_.

She'd somehow failed so spectacularly as to hurt him.

She could fix this, though, because she had the Force. She could fix this, if they would just let her try.

“Get her out of here!” Wedge cried, and Finn and Poe together blocked Luke from her sight.

Finn cupped her cheeks and turned her to face him. “Rey, we need to figure out what the hell went wrong before you try again. It was—it was like—like you were draining the life from him rather than helping him!”

Rey paused, stunned.

“Let’s go outside, can we go outside?” he asked her.

“But I was trying to help. It should have worked,” she said numbly, and let Finn guide her outside, where she sat in silence and refused to look up from the ground.

Was something _making_ her go to the Dark Side no matter what she did to stay on the side of Light? She didn't understand how something that should have worked—healing, like she's healed Sam that time, or others since—had done exactly what it was meant _not_ to do.

And there wasn't anyone to go to for answers, not when the only one she could think of who would know was the person she'd just nearly killed.

“Maybe it’s something with him,” Finn was saying. “It was like he or—or the Force was—deflecting everything you tried to do.”

He pulled her into a hug and sat them on a low wall. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? That he would protect himself—or the Force would protect him—from Snoke by, I don’t know, negating the Force around him? So if Snoke somehow found him and tried to kill him, he’d—”

“Kill himself.”

“Maybe? That's what you said when he made you sick and me dizzy. Like the ysalamiri, remember?” Finn tried, grasping at straws. It sounded good, though.

Rey looked faint. “So by trying to heal him I…”

“Healed yourself?” Finn said, trying to focus on the positive. “And…”

“Drained him,” Rey said, sounding numb.

“Well, but you didn’t do it on purpose!” Finn protested.

Rey looked small and sad and very tired when he looked down at her, and she turned to bury her face against his chest. He felt her take some uneven breaths and she turned her face just enough to be understood.

“What do I do?” she asked him. “I need him.”

She wanted her teacher back, but she also wanted _Luke_ back, who had claimed her as family and come to her rescue when she'd most needed it.


	19. Chapter 19

“Okay, he’s stable,” Poe said, sitting back, and glancing nervously at Wedge Antilles. “I guess you don’t have any idea what just happened?”

Wedge didn’t answer. He was probably a little angry, Poe guessed, after what they had just witnessed, but was too polite—or too smart—to accuse Rey of anything intentional. 

Luke was relying on the Freitak to breathe, which they would have to hook up to a starship after a few hours when it ran out of power. He had also gone a shade of blue, like a hologram or—he guessed—a Force ghost. Except his body was still here. “Maybe if you tried the True Love’s Kiss thing?” 

Wedge only narrowed his eyes. “Maybe if Mara were still here.” 

Poe blinked. “Oh?”

“His wife.” 

They suddenly were startled by a cry outside—

“Is that smoke?” 

Rey whirled around to look and screeched.

“The tree!” she cried. 

Before Finn could respond, she pulled away from him and bolted in the direction of the smoke.

Poe and Wedge burst from the cottage to see Rey sprinting and slipping down the hill. 

“What— _ oh _ !” Poe said, and looked at Finn, and they tore off after her. 

The Force Tree was smoking, flames licking the base. Why was it on fire?  _ How  _ was it on fire? The nuns stood around it in anguish, forming a line of buckets of water from the ocean, but it wasn’t going to be enough.

Rey paused only a moment, not even long enough for Finn and Poe to catch up, and then darted in around the caretakers and the flames and through the sort passageway. The interior of the tree was thick with smoke, but she knew where she was going and held her breath.

“Rey!” Poe and Finn screamed after her, but a wall of flame kept them back. The tree cracked ominously. 

She had to get the books, Luke's books, the ones he kept here because it was safe and they were the last of the old Jedi texts. She had nearly killed Luke, she had probably lit his Force Tree on fire  _ somehow _ , she wasn't about to let his books burn.

The caretakers were yelling when she re-appeared and nearly slammed into Poe and Finn, who were still trying to come after her. They took her shoulders and steered her away from the fire and the smoke while her eyes streamed—both from smoke and heartache—and she clutched the precious books close to her chest.

“What the hell was that?” Poe asked, more at the situation than at her. He took the smoldering books from her hands. “Whoa, books?! These are books! There were  _ books  _ on this island and you didn’t tell us?” 

“Poe, you don’t read,” Rey accused, and since she was alright enough to sass him, Poe punched her arm gently. 

“What are they?” Finn asked, joining them and brushing ash from Rey's hair and shoulders. He leaned in to get a better look at the books, but didn't feel like trying to decipher the titles upside down.

“They're Luke's. That was a Force tree—” 

They turned to look at the tree as it gave a great crack and began to fall in on itself. 

“He kept these old Jedi books in there, because it was hollow,” Rey answered. She took one of the books back and brushed its cover clean very gently before handing it to Finn.

“I think...I destroyed the tree, too. I couldn't let these just burn, not when Luke says they're the last ones.”

“You didn’t destroy the tree, Rey, that’s impossible. You were up there in the hut!” Poe assured her. “And you didn’t hurt Luke—something freaky happened with the Force that wasn’t your fault. It’s not like it’s a sci—aah!” 

Poe actually yelped and turned around as a blue being materialized behind them, and he trained his mechno-arm on it. 

“Who are you?!” he demanded, though if he had thought about it, he probably could have figured it out.

But Obi-Wan only gave Poe an amused look before turning to his great-granddaughter.

“You've been creating quite the disturbance,” he said gently, though he didn't seem to be scolding her. 

Finn reached over and gently pressed Poe’s arm back to his side and patted his shoulder.

“That's Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he told him, since for the moment the Force ghost seemed only concerned for Rey, and not so much for introductions.

“Obi- _ what _ ?!” Poe hissed, but was ignored. He stared with awe at the blue Force ghost, Finn holding his arms. 

Rey was already answering, her voice simultaneously furious and anguished.

“I didn't mean to! It keeps  _ happening _ —I almost killed Luke! It's all wrong, and I can't wake Luke up to tell me how to fix it,” she told him..

“You don’t  _ need  _ Luke,” Obi-Wan said firmly, like he was scolding her, but this time for holding onto training boosters she didn’t need. “You  _ don’t  _ need this tree, and you  _ don’t  _ need those books. You are what we’ve grown beyond, as an Order.”  

“But I don't know what to do. I got so  _ angry _ when I was fighting Ren and Snoke, and I don't know what would have happened if Luke hadn't helped me,” Rey admitted softly. “And now he’s...now I…” 

Obi-Wan just stared at her mildly. 

“What if I'm doing this all wrong and I make myself unintentionally go to the Dark Side?” she asked, shoulders hunched as if it might make her smaller and less noticeable.

“That’s a rather selfish question for someone already worried about the Dark side to be asking, don’t you think?” Obi-Wan said, sternly, shocking her out of feeling sorry for herself. “Now get going. The First Order is on their way. I destroyed the Tree so that—” 

“That was  _ you _ ?!” Rey exclaimed, too startled to be sad anymore.

“Yes. Now go on, go! We've already caused the caretakers enough chaos without bringing a fight to this island. The First Order will find nothing of interest here,” Obi-Wan told her, even going so far as to make a shooing motion at them.

“But—” Rey started, not quite done with her questions, but Obi-Wan gave her a mild, tolerant frown and promptly disappeared.

The nuns, gone still at the appearance of the Force ghost, dropped what they were doing and started back for their huts, pulling Rey, Poe, and Finn along with them and chattering loudly with each other.

They were obviously being dismissed. 

“All right, all  _ right _ ,” Poe said, disliking being manhandled by people he wasn’t sleeping with. “We’re going! Thanks for your hospitality.” 

As they made the trek back up the hill to Luke’s hut at as fast a clip as they could manage, Poe began planning their departure, and there was a bit of a mad rush. Poe relieved Sam from Chewie and worked on fielding a disgruntled (worried) Wedge Antilles and packing up their meager possessions. Finn, Rey, and Chewie loaded up the X-wing, Wedge’s transport, and Luke himself, settling him into a state-of-the-art medpod in Wedge’s shuttle. 

“We're all set here,” Finn said over the comms once he and Rey were both buckled in the cockpit of Wedge's shuttle, looking out the front windows at the inside of one of the _Falcon_ 's cargo bays.

Rey was reaching periodically for the controls as if to fly the shuttle, then dropping her hand back to her lap and frowning darkly.

“What are we waiting for?” she asked impatiently, but before Finn could answer, the  _ Falcon _ roared to life.

“ _ Finally _ ,” she muttered. 

There was an answering roar from the comm near the holochess table, where Chewie and the droids were sitting with Sam.

In the cockpit, Wedge didn’t look any happier from being allowed to fly the  _ Millenium Falcon _ , no matter how fast it was. 

“I’ve plotted our course to Yavin IV,” Poe said from the copilot’s seat. 

“Couldn’t we go...anywhere else?”  

“Hey, watch it,” Poe teased, ready to kick this old man out of his wife’s seat if he wasn’t even going to fanboy properly about it. “That’s my home.”

“I didn’t say anything about your ass-end of nowhere planet, farmboy.” 

They made the jump, stars blurring past them in the viewport, and Wedge pushed back from the console, anyway. “I just want to get Luke to a doctor.” 

“Rok—uh, we might be able to contact Dr. Ori,” Poe offered. “If we want a kind of mad-scientist-type to take a look at him.” 

“Ah. Just a regular doctor, please? You do have those, on Yavin?” 

“ _ Buddy… _ ” 

But Wedge snorted, waving a hand in apology, and made to leave, but he hesitated at the door. 

“So...you think Luke was just protecting himself?” Wedge began. 

Poe shrugged. “Who knows. I know she was trying to heal him, and we know she can do that, but it didn’t work this time. Maybe the doctors can tell us more.”

...

In the shuttle’s cockpit, Rey sighed, trying to find her center. 

“I’ve been asking the wrong questions,” she said, seemingly out of nowhere, to Finn. “Worried about the wrong things.” 

Finn blinked several times, having been ready to doze off—these seats were much better than the  _ Falcon's _ —and turned to regard Rey whole he caught up with what she'd been saying.

“What do you mean?” he asked, and then frowned very earnestly.

“How can you worry about the wrong things when you're worried about  _ everything _ ?” he asked, and she shot him a look before realizing he was trying a little too hard to be serious.

“I’m—I’ve been—too worried about  _ me _ ,” Rey said. She sounded very calm about this—too calm, in some ways. “And I’m...no one. In the Force, I mean. I’m not special. Neither is Luke. It’s...the Force of  _ others. _ ”

Finn frowned, really frowned, this time. He wanted immediately to defend Rey from herself, because he  _ knew _ that Ren had said the same thing to her that she now said to him.

She just seemed so rational, not like she was demeaning herself, and he wasn't sure how to respond.

“I don't understand… What do you mean it's the Force of others?” he asked her.

“The Force in every living being is bigger than me, bigger than all of this,” Rey said. “And I couldn't have done anything to Luke that he didn't… I think whatever happened wasn't my fault.”

“ _ I  _ could have told you  _ that _ ,” Finn said, smiling, and Rey snorted. “Whatever you did was working, right? Until it wasn't. But you weren't doing anything new. Something else backfired,” he said.

He reached over the distance between them and took her hand.

“No one who worries so much about going to the Dark Side is going to accidentally find themselves there,” he told her, “Which is  _ not _ meant to encourage you to keep worrying!” 

Rey chuckled, and lifted Finn’s hand to her mouth to kiss it. 

“Hey,” she said, and waited until Finn was looking at her. “Once we get Luke back to Yavin, we can worry about finding your mom.” 

Finn brightened, having nearly forgotten Jedha and his mother in the chaos of the past several days.

“I'll check with Kix when we get back and see if they've found anything else,” he told Rey, and she smiled.

“And speaking of mothers—I'm going to go check on Sam, in case Chewie is getting tired of babysitting,” she told him. They both traded a look of amused skepticism—Chewie seemed to like children in general, and Sam in particular, so it was unlikely he would have grown tired of babysitting within a few minutes. But Rey also seemed to need something to do, and Finn gave her hand a squeeze before letting her go.

In the quiet of the cockpit after she left, he thought idly of his mother, alive after all this time and living on a small, blighted, nothing planet. He wondered if she would look the same as her reflection, or if he'd recognize her voice, or if she'd recognize  _ him. _ He thought eagerly of introducing her to Sam, who she would surely recognize, and Poe and Rey, and everyone dear to him in the Resistance. He hoped she would come back with them, because (perhaps selfishly) he could imagine nothing he would love more than having all of his family together in one place.

The biggest problem would be getting an encrypted message to the planet’s surface. Their latest intelligence said that there was First Order activity in the area, which raised several questions about what she was doing there, though there remained some settlements on the surface, according to reports. Still—why there? 

Finn pulled up his SRTF Rosters on his datapad to look for someone who could help them with some serious slicing. BB-8 was good, of course, but some jobs really needed the touch of the living. 

(Rey’s talk of the Force of Others reminded him of that.)

Timons was an obvious choice for her skills and knowledge, but she wasn’t great under pressure, and Finn didn’t want to subject her to unnecessary pressure for what was essentially a personal favor. So he scrolled down the list, and then stopped. 

_ Rose Tico was a slicer? _ That must be new. Maybe it was time to test those skills. Maybe she could befriend the local wildlife, too, if they ran into any trouble. And—he checked her file—wasn’t she from a planet around here? He nodded and set down the datapad, deciding to ask her. 

He would also have to see if he could contact anyone on the planet. And they’d have to see if Kes was free to watch Sam, and see if the Republic could let them take more leave, and—and a thousand other problems that were easier than thinking about whether his mother would even want to see him. 

“Finn? Finn!” 

Finn looked up to see Poe sticking his head into the shuttle, sounding like he had been calling him for a while. 

“Yeah?” 

“Didn’t you hear me? We’re making dinner, come on, buddy.” He stopped, idly, to check out Luke’s medpod, but the old Jedi was still sleeping. 

“Right. Yeah, okay.” Finn seemed distracted, but he let Poe put an arm around him and guide him out.

As they left, neither man saw the pair of blue-lit figures standing over Luke's body.

One of them was Luke. 

“I don't think you're going to get any better by astral projecting yourself everywhere when you should be resting,” Obi-Wan scolded. 

“I just need to make sure they're okay,” Luke insisted, and his life Force flickered.

“They are more than okay,” Obi-Wan said firmly, like he was maybe a little sick of not being listened to. He pursed his lips before continuing. “It's time he learned the truth, Luke.”

Luke glanced up from his body to watch them retreating. 

“What truth is that?” he asked, but when he searched his feelings, it hit him. Maybe, somehow, he’d always known.

Inside the medpod, a tear tracked down Luke's temple. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the longer than normal wait on this chapter, folks, as it went through some heavy last-minute rewrites to better fit with the beginning of the next story. Subscribe to the series and stay tuned, and, as always, thanks for reading, and an extra-special thank you for leaving comments! <3

**Author's Note:**

> Running List of OCs:
> 
>  **Berno Bey:** Male human, Poe's maternal grandfather.  
>  **Breha Bey:** Female human, Poe's cousin, of comparable age to Rey and Finn.  
>  **Coni:** Female human Resistance soldier. Likes illegal tackles in Boloball.  
>  **Deeks:** Male human ex-stormtrooper, now pilot for the Resistance, complete dork.  
>  **Jonorai:** Female Twi'lek in charge of the Resistance daycare center.  
>  **Jura Bey:** Female human, Poe's maternal grandmother.  
>  **Karlo Dameron:** Male human, Kes' brother.  
>  **Colonel Lightbridge:** Male human, Republic officer.  
>  **"Nana" Dameron:** Female human in her late 80s, Kes' mother. Suffers selective dementia.  
>  **Reist:** Nonbinary human Resistance soldier.  
>  **Dr. Rok Ori:** Male Chiss doctor who specializes in cybernetics and is obnoxious.  
>  **Rokko:** Female Zabrak tattoo artist.  
>  **Sall:** Female Bothan physical therapist for the Resistance.  
>  **Sam Dameron:** Finn's clone rescued from a First Order cloning facility, adopted by Finn, Rey, and Poe. Drools a lot.  
>  **Sevens:** Nonbinary human ex-stormtrooper now Resistance soldier. Dating Jessika Pava.  
>  **Dr. Tamo Lan:** Female Ewok doctor of psychology, therapist for ex-stormtroopers.  
>  **Tano Bey:** Male human, Breha's husband. Childhood friends with Poe.  
>  **Timons:** Female human ex-First Order tech, was on the officer track before defecting. Major PTSD and anxiety.  
>  **Torch:** Male Zabrak Resistance soldier. Finn's second in command.
> 
> ...
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! And if you haven't read the rest of _Stars and Skies_ , we hope you'll check out the series.
> 
> Please let us know what you like or what we can improve on in the Comments. You can also come bother us on Tumblr at [Maeglinthebold](http://maeglinthebold.tumblr.com/) and [A-singer-of-songs](http://a-singer-of-songs.tumblr.com/).
> 
> And, as always, a shout-out to commenters and to the very supportive [SWWA](https://starwarswritingalliance.tumblr.com/)! 


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